


United Nations, Divided Souls - Part 1 R&R

by Maygra



Series: Immortal Nations [1]
Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Future Fic, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 1997-06-30
Updated: 1999-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 04:13:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 36,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maygra/pseuds/Maygra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Future fic in the HL universe</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

United Nations, Divided Souls  
Part 1 - R&R

MAYGRA DE RHEMA & MACGEORGE  
(c) 1997

 

She went by Kir because it was easy to remember and because despite the governing pattern of tribal rule, most of the military force were trained under a different system and the tribal declinations made no sense to them. So she was Kir to all, Silent Storm in the Council and Ghost to the R&R elite teams. And in her gentler more private moments she was Mother and Healer -- Shaman.

The scar on her dark throat marked her as part of the old Community and with Immortality out now in plain view for all to see, her true age was no secret, nor her first death. She had not survived the original Journey along the Trail of Tears, but she made it now; not as one of the dispossessed but as one of the Reclaimers. R&R had managed to find its two tasks and she functioned as head of one, Search and Rescue. The R&R was a joke -- coined by the young and brazen teams that ventured to the Gates and beyond. Only those who could "Rock and Re-load" were allowed past what had once been the Mason-Dixon line but was now but a vague memory. That invisible geographic line was called The Gates and Kir's team moved north and west from Atlanta, alerted that one of their own -- one of the Community -- was in need of aid.

There were others needing rescue as well, mortal and Immortal alike, but they were impossibly far. The Eastern Whores, those Immortals that had found their allegiance with the invasion out of what had once been China, held the ground north of The Gates with a vengeance. Their influence extended well to the west into what had once been California but was now as much a desert as anything from Texas to Old Las Vegas. But the east and mid-continent were hard to hold onto and pockets of resistance still existed from as far north and west as Columbus all the way to the hold-out in Maine and Connecticut clinging to their borders and their allies in Canada

Pseudo-allies, Kir thought. Canada was literally fighting to remain neutral and having much less success than other detached countries to the North and South American Continents. Of all the previous alliances, only Australia had managed to stay out of the conflict entirely and even that was in jeopardy as Africa faltered under the strain.

She shrugged the thoughts off as she checked weapons and her team. They had enough to worry about in holding onto what had once been the Confederacy of the United States. Australia had turned them down flat when they asked. No blame, but unlikely to gain any real allies when their turn came. And come it would. Everyone else had already surrendered their tickets.

The harshest blow had come only three years before. Rome had fallen. Finally. The Vatican had been moved to Sydney only the year before and that fact as much as anything had kept Australia silent. But first Rome and then the inexorable sweep west had come. The last she heard was that Paris was no more and the United Kingdom had finally become united indeed as England, Scotland and Ireland finally had someone besides each other to fight. Kir had no doubt that the Germanic States and the Balkans would be the next to fall.

"Coming up on Knoxville, Commander," The skimmer pilot informed her through her headset and she acknowledged the information, settling her sword across her back. She had gotten the warning of an Immortal moving toward Atlanta two days ago, sorted the identity out and tracked him. But Knoxville was a weak point because of the airfield and she could only pray to the spirits of her ancestors that the other half of the R&R team had managed to secure them some space and time.

The skimmer geared down and her hopes fell. The fighting was heavy and her target was being hard pressed along with his small band. She pushed along that link that bound the Immortals together.

Hang on, MacLeod. We're coming!

Sean heard the skimmer before the others did, glancing quickly over his shoulder to see where Connor had taken the kids, but he couldn't see them -- probably a good thing. If he couldn't see them the Eastern commandos shouldn't be able to either.

The pack on his back was jerked around, the contents spilled with little care but his fingers closed over the flare gun. He loaded and fired and then swore as a different light show started. Oh, Da, he thought already moving toward the spot. We really need to get you to tone down your presence a bit, you ass. He moved again and this time pulled out sword as well as the semi he carried. The juggling act was familiar, one weapon for the numbers, one for the problems. Who had taught him that? Adam, he recalled with a grim smile, the smile bringing with it an ache of loss he didn't want to acknowledge.

And had no time to. His Da was on his knees, the Quickening still settling around him, nearly oblivious to the men moving in to flank him. Two quick shots took out one, and another shot, fired from behind him, took out the second. Sean glanced back to see his kinsman grinning like a fool.

"Ya, so you 're the better marksmen," he snapped as Connor moved up beside him.

"I'll cover. You grab the idiot," Connor said and Sean was moving. The Quickening had not quite settled but Sean only barely noticed as he grabbed at his father's wrists and pulled him up and over his broad shoulders. His knuckles scraped the ground as he picked up the ancient katana as well and he was running.

Then he was falling as a bullet ripped through the back of his knee. He rolled, pulling his father's body with him and heard Connor shooting. Onto his knees and sword up as someone approached. Mortal. No matter. Swords worked pretty well on them too. The man -- the fool -- practically impaled himself on Sean's blade.

"Sean!" A warning from close by and he rolled again, wincing as the pain in his leg robbed him of balance and stability. He needn't have worried as his father lunged, awkwardly, the face still reeling under post Quickening confusion. The attacker tripped, fell across Sean's legs and then went still as his head was connected solidly to and with the butt of Sean's rifle.

"You need to watch your back," Duncan MacLeod said accusingly to his son then dropped to his knees under a wash of weakness, dropping the rifle.

Adam, brother, come on, he can't do this alone, Sean swore, reaching for his father. God but this was getting harder for Duncan every time. Harder still on the end of another bitter search ending in failure. Sean tried for that tenuous contact, felt it --- grabbed for it and felt it slide away again. A silent oath and then he was up and limping, dragging his father with him.

"Nice cover," he snarled as Connor came forward to help him.

"I was occupied," Connor said without anger and Sean caught only a glimpse of the three bodies close to where Connor had been positioned. All three were dead -- one headless. "Skimmer is down but it's small."

"Take the kids," MacLeod said harshly, finally getting his feet under him, body tensing but he had control again. Experience prompted Sean to let go, but Connor didn't and Mac jerked away, physical contact too painful for the moment. "And you go with them," he said to Sean.

More fire and all three ducked. The shots were returned with the high-powered whine of a K-30. "Get over here!" Kir snapped and the three ran as Kir and her team opened up again, driving the attackers under cover.

"Assault team," MacLeod said as he ducked behind the truck Kir was using for cover. "No more than twenty."

"Or less," Connor chuckled. "Kids?"

"Kids?" Kir echoed and turned to face them.

"There," Connor pointed to a camouflaged stack of drums and tanks. "Twelve of them. Cheaper by the dozen," he quipped and Kir groaned.

"And?" she demanded.

"And nothing," Duncan said leaning back against the truck tire. Sean hovered close by and Mac finally relented and offered his son a faint smile. "Nice rescue."

The return smile was heartbreaking. And familiar, too familiar in the face of Mac's failure. There was so much of Methos in his son's face and manner, sometimes more than Mac's for all that he and his son were built along similar lines. Sean was more compact, skin paler, features more angular.

At least he got my nose, Mac thought.

"The skimmer can probably handle the kids but not them and the team," Kir muttered and dropped back, pulling another battery clip from her pouch. She fumbled and Connor yanked the weapon from her and took over.

"Let's move them, then," Connor said. "I'll cover."

Sean just rolled his eyes but he was moving, Duncan and Kir on his heels. Squeals of fright greeted them then both Mac and Sean had little ones clinging to them. Fathers Above, Kir sighed. Not one of them over eight years old. Not one that spoke English. French if she could judge.

"Orphanage in Paris...took a hit as we were leaving," Mac said, carefully holding a six year old girl in his arms. "The Sisters insisted, but they wouldn't come with us.

"I'm sorry," Kir said and smiled at a four year old who could not stop crying. She couldn't blame the boy. She was damn well near tears herself. "Come on, mes petites," she murmured gathering up the boy. She rubbed her chin against her shoulder, clocking on the sub-q mic. "Revas, power up. We got packages. Twelve little ones."

"You sound like such a commando," Duncan said and was immediately behind her. She turned her head and grinned at him.

"Practice," The kiss was brief but promising as she started forward, the skimmer hovering in. "Welcome home," she muttered and he laughed. Finally, she thought.

The load-in went without incident and Kir had to chuckle at the conversations she was following with her ear piece. Connor was an enthusiastic field leader but he drove her team bats. "He thinks he is fucking invincible," she heard Donatha snarl. But the burly sharpshooter was not a foot away from the mad Scotsman as they pushed the Eastern Assault team back into the fields surrounding the airport.

"Ready to Rock!" Revas called. "Coming?"

"Sean is," Duncan said and refused to argue with his son. "The kids need a familiar face. I'll see you in a couple of hours," Mac promised. "You agreed if I took you would do as I say." Sean's face was screwed up, ready to argue.

"We're back! You go. You are too important to lose."

"Don't say that! Ever!" Mac snapped, dark eyes flashing dangerously. "We're back when we are in Atlanta," Mac said, feeling foolish arguing with a son who practically looked older than Mac did.

"On board," Kir said and Sean relented, climbing in and securing the belts.

"Two hours or I'm coming back," Sean raised his voice over the skimmer's whine. He wasn't kidding.

"Yeah, yeah," Mac said and held out his hand. Without hesitation Sean gripped his father's arm below the elbow, hazel eyes meeting and holding brown ones before they released and Revas took the skimmer up.

"You can't treat him like a child forever," Kir said as Mac's arm slipped around her waist.

"Oh, yes I can," MacLeod said. "Come on. Let's go rescue your team from Connor," he grinned, shifting Sean's gun to his shoulder.

The skirmish cost Kir one of her team but not permanently. Donatha came back screaming epithets at Connor for being a blind, bloody, dangerous fool.

"You followed," Connor said unrepentant but he was solicitous in his care of the woman.

"I think they are in love," Kir whispered into Duncan's ear, gratified when he chuckled and nodded. His fingers tightened over hers.

He needed to talk and she needed to listen but the skimmer was not the place. Nor was there a time immediately available. Debriefing came first -- hers. Then Duncan's although he managed to find time to grab a shower and clean clothes.

She and Revas, her skimmer pilot, took the children to the Mothers. Kir felt like a Mother Goose character surrounded by chattering, crying, frightened small people. She consoled as best she could, but like so many damaged by war, these children would be forced to cope, to deal with far more ugliness than children were meant to bear. Kir observed Revas' stiff back as he watched the Mothers expertly herd the confused youngsters into the schoolhouse. They had all been damaged, she thought. Revas had been forced to leave behind two motherless little girls when they had been caught behind Eastern Dawn lines. Another of her team, Eddie Two Horses, had watched his tribe be nearly annihilated and chased off of their last remaining lands in Oklahoma. All of them had a story. That's why they were here, fighting to preserve what remained of their beliefs, their family, their freedom. Kir squeezed Revas' shoulder sympathetically, but he pulled away, too full of pain to accept her comfort.

Kir found Sean sprawled on the sofa of the large apartment he sometimes shared with her and Duncan. Sprawled, draped over furniture like he had no bones at all, but he was alert when she entered.

She could see Duncan in him. Sean actually looked Duncan's age or better, having come into his Immortality late -- and deliberately. She knew the story. Knew it still rankled Duncan that Methos and Sean had taken the decision from him. Old battles. But she could see his relationship to Methos in Sean's face as well, especially in the level and hidden hazel-eyed gaze. Sean was very much the union of those two personalities -- emerging as a formidable personality in his own right. She wondered if Duncan would ever see it or if Methos ever had.

"Tell me..." She prompted, making a pot of tea then turning to face the light streaming in through the windows.

"We never got to Rome," Sean said softly, his own regret apparent. "We hit Paris just as Bar Abbas did. Finding the kids was an accident."

"Fortuitous for them," Kir said.

"It's gone...burning...I think Bar Abbas may have spared the Louvre but I wouldn't take any bets on it," he added bitterly. Kir waited. Paris was home to Sean. As much home as anywhere. "But we couldn't make it to Rome. Da almost went on foot," he added, tone suggesting Sean would have joined him. "Connor, for once, was the voice of reason."

"Scary thought, that," she smiled.

Sean chuckled, his laugh so much like Mac's his father might have been in the room.

"And just as we were taking off, Da...he felt him...I thought he would jump out of the plane," Sean murmured and his distress was so acute Kir set her mug down and came to him. Sean curled himself into her open arms like the child Duncan sometimes treated him as. His fingers dug painfully into her hair as he buried his face in her shoulder. "And I felt..."

He could say no more. There was no way to express to Kir or anyone save Duncan what he felt when that ancient soul rose and surfaced briefly in his own. Three years since they'd lost Methos. Dead but not beheaded, lost and trapped somewhere in what had once been Rome -- they thought. It was where he had been going when the city fell and they'd lost him. Sean had thought his father would go mad when that connection, that link that bound the two most important people in Sean's life together was nearly severed. Father and Brother: They were that and more. The two men were his parents, his family, the ones that had raised him. Duncan MacLeod was his biological father through a series of events so bizarre Sean had trouble sorting them out. Methos, his Adam, was his biological brother by the same twisted configuration of familial ties. But the emotional ties were what blinded his reason now, tearing at the calm he had learned living with two such volatile personalities. That one was missing ate at the other two members of the odd family like a festering wound.

The link was still there. Methos was...dead on and off, but not. His Immortality struggling to bring him back and then faltering under whatever trap held him away from them. And it was a trap of sorts or else the oldest Immortal would be here. It was reassuring to know that if they could but find him, get to him, it would be all right. But until then, these brief resurgences were almost a torture of sorts.

Sean understood the link that ran through the Immortal Community better than most; his own odd blood heritage giving him an edge over most Immortals. He had tried to define it but could not. But as surely as his father knew the location and general health of others who had joined their strange alliance, he knew that Methos was the anchor for that link -- the anchor for Duncan.

Everytime Mac took a head, Methos felt it, would come just to the edge of wakefulness, of life, and then it would fade again and the only impressions Sean could hold onto were pain and fear. Then nothing until it happened again.

But Duncan could only tell the general location and remaining in Rome once the city fell had become far too dangerous. The Immortals supporting the Eastern Dawn knew exactly who was at the hub of the interconnected Immortals of the Community. They wanted that link broken, or better yet, they wanted to use that link to hunt down the Community members - which meant they wanted the Highlander.

They had tried twice so far to take the Highlander and damn near succeeded. Luckily Connor had been on hand at the second attempt. The first attempt had cost them Methos but MacLeod had made it out, but the cost had been higher than any of them could have imagined

Understanding only a small part of what so tormented the younger Immortal Kir gentled him and comforted him until he could draw away, once more in control. He called her his big sister and she thought it funny, her smile prompting a hesitant one from him.

Duncan's presence registered and Kir rose, greeting him at the door with a kiss. "Done. The kids are settled," he said. "I am heading back out tomorrow," he informed them and Kir made no effort to argue.

"You can't get to Rome!" Sean was not quite so restrained.

"I cannae' leave him there!" Mac snapped. "I cannae' let him keep...taking ...supporting this when he has nae the wit nor the strength to balance it out!"

"Da," Sean tried for reason. "They know who you are and what you look like. Every time you go to Europe you risk everything. Including the lives of the people who go with you."

"Then I will go alone," Mac said, his body was tense and Kir reached out only to have him flinch away. "There isn't any other way to find him."

"I'll talk to Hawk of Moons," Kir offered.

"We've tried that and I can't blame him. The survival of Cherokee is his concern. Immortals are just a nice bonus," Mac said.

"That's not fair," Kir said evenly. "Resources--"

"I'm not talking about Resources."

"He wants to find the Grandfather as much as you do," Kir said pushing her dark braid back over her shoulder. "But moving that much personnel and equipment into a zone that is so securely held--"

"I said I agree with him," Mac said, turning to face her as he leaned against the kitchen counter, facing them both. "Europe will have to fight her own battles but this isn't about the war." His face was a mask, hiding a pain so deep Kir had never been able to get at it or help ease it.

"If you can't find him, Bar Abbas can't either," Kir said.

"We can't be sure of that," Mac said. "We don't know what has happened. Where he is, what the conditions are -- they might find him by accident. I can't risk that. And I can't, won't risk losing him permanently. You know what they are doing to the old ones when they find them."

Kir did know. She didn't like to think about it. It would be bad enough that they were after those powerful Quickenings, she might even be able to forgive it that were all but it wasn't. The leaders of the Eastern Dawn, or rather their hired "scientific researchers" had a keen interest in Immortals - in Immortality. It would be politically incorrect and military suicide to experiment on their own Immortal allies but Immortal enemies or Unaffiliates; those were fair game. Not to mention the very threat of such experimentation was enough to bring them new allies - especially when there was a bounty offered. Join or die had become the new mantra of the Immortals of a mercenary mind.

"Then let me go," Sean said. He had made this offer before, well aware that his father had as much fear of losing him as he did of Methos. "If I am close enough I will know. Connor would go with me."

"Connor will most likely get you killed or worse," Duncan said darkly and shoved off from the counter. "No."

Kir winced as her com-link sounded in her ear. She listened for a moment then swore. "Shit. We just lost Richmond," she said. "I'm needed in ops. Don't do anything stupid -- either of you -- before I get back or you will regret it," she warned and was gone.

"I'm really glad she is your girlfriend," Sean muttered rising from the sofa. His father nodded with a faint smile, face still marred by a brooding gaze. "Da, get some rest," Sean said softly, feeling the parent. It happened.

"Sean. Promise me you won't..."

"I already did. To you. To Methos," Sean sighed. "But you have to let me help."

"You are the last of us, son," Mac said. "There will be no more Immortals after you. That's a legacy of sorts."

"Like being the first?" Sean murmured. "That doesn't make you any more expendable for being born somewhere in the middle. And if you fall, what about the Community then? What about Darius--"

"Right now I could cheerfully curse Darius to perdition. There was no way he could have seen this coming, Sean. You are my heir in more ways than one."

Sean's bitter laugh soured Mac's mood further. "For want of a prince the kingdom was lost. I do have some choices here."

Mac didn't have an answer for him and he was tired of fighting with his son. Without a word he pushed past him and headed for the bedroom, avoiding further confrontation.

"Methos would be so proud," Sean muttered, dropping back onto the sofa with his head in his hands.

....the ground shifted, moved, rocked, slid and he could feel it...smothering, choking and then the faintest waft of air of oxygen and he pulled it into his lungs with effort....noise, sound, silence and he could not move, nor breathe again...nor....

Duncan surged up and awake choking, coughing, his chest constricting as he fought to breathe. Firm hands gripped him, soothed him, voice murmuring in the darkness in a language that was both harsh and comforting. Wisps of silken hair fell across his shoulders as those hands stroked his skin, eased the terror as Kir pulled him against her, unmindful of his sweating body, her own skin deliciously cool and smooth. Another second and she/he heard/felt and Sean opened the door, back-lit from the light in the living room, compact body all shadows and tension.

Duncan moved and Kir with him as Sean staggered forward, his own sob of grief buried against his father's knees as Duncan folded himself around his son.

Kir could not feel the link that bound the two men to Methos but she knew the signs. The Grandfather had awakened, however briefly, haunting them. She pulled on a robe and went to the kitchen to fix tea and whiskey. The physical comfort they needed was not in her power to give -- for this they could only find comfort in each other.

"Awake is he?" Connor asked, blinking blearily. Kir nodded. She was not aware Connor had been on the couch. She expected him to find sleeping quarters elsewhere. He usually did. She offered the bottle and he nodded, taking the cup without the tea.

"Do you get any of this?" she asked, peering around his shoulder to see the two men, still hidden by shadows, but close yet.

"Off Duncan, yes. A bit. Blood and water, you know," he said following her gaze. "My...cousin is not so hard as he likes to think," he commented and Kir smiled.

"You make up for it, right? Heart of ice, mind of steel," she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Connor leered wolfishly at her and it was not all in play. Duncan should count himself lucky to have caught this dark-eyed, warrior-souled beauty. Kir was easily Connor's height, willow thin, lean, sharp planed features from the bloodlines that had bred her. Midnight black hair fell to her ass with only the occasional white streak which she had never hidden. Dusky skin, bronzed and flawless was stretched tight across cheekbones and throat except where the pale scar gleamed. A matching one lay on Connor's throat, on all the throats of those who had joined the Community. Including his kinsman, only Duncan bore another scar across the palm and only one other hand bore that mark of unity -- Methos. Connor would have offered if he had but known and had since but the tie was too tight to be abandoned or altered now, he mused, reaching out to push Kir's hair back from her face with gentle fingers.

"Down, puppy," Kir said with good-natured indulgence but her eyes were still watching her lover and his son as they finally untangled themselves and entered. Something in the bloodline, she thought, watching them move together into the living room. Twins in their grace, in their stance, and not always so far apart in their temperaments. Duncan accepted tea and whiskey. Sean went for the tea alone. "Is he still...?" she needn't have asked. The tension in Mac's face told her even before he nodded tightly. Wherever he was, Methos was aware...or mostly.

"Shall I get a plane fueled?" Connor asked.

"Yes," Mac said. "Constantine is in London. I'll make the arrangements," he said and headed for the patch-phone, downing his drink. There were perks to living with the head of one of the R&R teams - the trans-oceanic phone link being one of them. In her more irritated moments, Kir thought his attraction to her more due to the access she had to the available technology. But it wasn't true and it wasn't fair. The MacLeods, all three of them, had done much in securing that technology for the Cherokee Nation.

Watching her lover, Kir pursed her lips. One of these little trips was going to cost him his head but she could no more stop him than she could keep him prisoner in what was supposed to be a "free" society. Without a word she moved past the men and disappeared into the bedroom. She emerged a few moments later, dressed in full kit. Connor looked at her in surprise.

"We do it once. I'll deal with Hawk of Moons when we get back," she said and Mac set the phone down, staring at her. She cocked her chin. "Patch to Res-Ops," she said into the mic. "Revas? I need volunteers and the Trans-skimmer. Want to see Rome?"

Less than an hour later the Trans-skimmer was warming up and gear and supplies were being loaded. Neither Kir nor Duncan were surprised at their bon voyage party.

Hawk of Moons was an impressive man, his heritage as apparent as Kir's. "You do remember what authorization is?" he asked of Kir, ignoring the other three Immortals entirely.

"When it suits me," Kir snapped at her adopted brother. "You do know what responsibility is, don't you? The elders did say it was imperative to save as many of the Ancients as we can."

"Here, not half a world away. They will have to come to us."

"If the Grandfather could he would," Kir said and laid her hands on her brother's shoulder. "You know this is about more."

"What I know is that what you are doing is suicidal," Hawk said icily. "I know his value. I also know yours and yours, MacLeod," he added and Duncan glared.

"But I am only part of it," Mac said. "Hawk, he is awake and aware and I can't do this alone. I never could."

"But you could choose another. You could use your son or your kinsman," Hawk said.

"I could cut off my arm," Duncan said. "But it would be foolish."

"As this is. We can't send back-up. Kir, please," Hawk of Moons' tone changed to one of personal concern.

"In and out, my brother. One attempt. That's all I have agreed to. Letting Mac continue his forays is just as dangerous as this. The right equipment..."

"The Trans-skimmer is a legitimate target for the East. The old planes are not," Hawk said. "Four of you, plus the team are hardly a viable trade for one Ancient."

Kir's face went tight. "Then you'd best seek your spirit guide again, brother. Mine is telling me to bring the Ancients home. As many as I can," she turned away, only to be stopped by a hand on her shoulder.

Hawk met her gaze for a long moment then motioned to his aide with a gesture. A small box was passed over. "Don't lose them," he said then spun on his heel and walked away, leaving Kir unsure if he meant the people or the equipment.

"What is it?" Sean asked.

"Pell trackers. We only have two dozen," Kir said and opened the box to hand out the small pager-sized clips. "Satellite linked. They can find us. Any of us." She turned one on and clipped it to her harness. "And if we get separated, we can find each other." She passed them out among the team as they boarded.

"He won't come after us," she murmured to Duncan as they belted in.

"I didn't expect him to. I didn't expect this..." he added fingering the small unit.

"I think he's just mad we didn't invite him along," Connor said and Kir laughed.

Maybe. Hawk of Moons was as much warrior as anyone but he was also leader. A good leader, she thought proudly. Worthy of being Chief.

Short of storms, nothing much would slow the Trans. Radar would not pick them up until they hit land, if then. Despite Mac's call, they went straight in, planning on using the United Kingdom as their off-launch once they completed their mission. Twenty-four hours. Revas would keep the Trans off the coast. They had fuel enough for that and to get them to the UK then they would have to fuel. Constantine was supposed to be ensuring that part of their plan. Land transport would have to be whatever they could find if they needed it.

"Pitch off," Revas informed them. "Coming up on what used to be the Vatican City."

Duncan had his head in his hands, concentrating. The strain was telling but he moved steadily enough.

"We got weapons fire," Tulsa at ops said. "Not heavy but somebody's fighting." She dumped her headset to check her weapon.

The Trans touched down and the doors popped, spilling out the small team -- four Immortals, six mortals -- into the fading sunset of Rome's fall.

"God Almighty," Connor said and Kir could not help but agree as the Trans lifted again. She had never been to Rome but she had seen pictures. She would not have recognized it. The city was nearly leveled. Revas had set them down in a plaza but she could sight no identifying landmarks at all.

"Here, this way," Duncan murmured leading them blindly. Well not blindly, she thought as they followed.

What they encountered was skirmishers, resistance fighter, scavengers. The East had destroyed the city more as a reminder of power than for any real military conquest. Leveled the Vatican to prove a point.

Duncan was like a dog on a scent, leading them, weaving among the ruins. Then Sean perked up, gripping his father's arm and the two of them moved.

This easy? Kir thought. We waited all this time and it would have been this easy? She should have known she spoke too soon.

"Christ help me," Duncan moaned. He could feel Methos, knew he was close, Practically beneath their feet.

Buried under what was left of the Vatican Library. A bulldozer would be the least of the equipment they would need.

Duncan was paying little heed after his initial shock. He moved into the rubble, stopping, pausing and moving again. Sean on the other side following the same pattern.

"What kind of explosives do we have?" Connor asked, watching his kinsmen.

"Tulsa, give me a munitions run," Kir asked. She could see the tiny ops lieutenant patrolling her edge of their perimeter.

"Carrying light, Ghost," the reply came back and Kir opened the external speaker so Connor could hear. "Grenades. Twenty ounces of Hi-plastique."

"Enough to move this pile or part of it?"

Tulsa clucked her tongue. "Maybe. A little. But only once..."

"Flyer to Ghost," Revas purred into her ear. "Could manage a scan for tracing,"

"You get your butt off-coast and save fuel!" Kir snapped. "No Texaco's out here, buddy." Connor was chuckling.

Duncan had stopped, almost swaying near a pile of loose blocks that might once have been a doorway.

"Ghost, found a map," Kir glanced up at a wave from Eddie Two Horses and moved toward him as he pulled a cracked plexi-glass panel out of the rubble. Parts of the wall-mounted map were shattered or broken, faded by the elements but it was legible. Eddie balanced the frame on his knee while Kir and Connor studied.

"We must be near the south entrance," Connor commented, glancing at the sky. "That would be the lower level entrance." His gaze followed his kinsman. "Methos would go low," he said half to himself.

"So he could be in the catacombs, underneath," Kir said. "And the entrance would be about where Mac is now. If we can get in there, if the tunnels held...could they have?"

"They have before," Connor murmured. "We only need enough room to get in. Duncan!"

The younger Scot turned, stepping off the pile as his cousin came up, Kir and Eddie trailing behind with the map. There was still the sound of gunfire close by but it was sporadic as the sun began setting. A dozen words and Duncan was nodding in agreement.

"He is that close," he murmured, closing his eyes to concentrate. Kir did as well, aware of Duncan's presence, of Connor's and Sean's and when she strained she caught the edge of something else. She passed her hand radio to Connor so he could talk to Tulsa and moved, letting the older MacLeods work out the placement of the munitions, calling the rest of her team in closer. Another structure stood half collapsed close by but it would be a place to set up camp.

Sean met her and she held out her hand. He took it for reassurance. Another strain and Kir could feel the faint ghosting of presence. Not what Duncan and Sean felt but the signature of an Immortal. It was weak but still there.

She was not quite sure she had believed any of it until this moment. Finding the Ancient had become something like the Quest for the Holy Grail, if only a the end of the Quest they might find some measure of peace. Peace for Duncan whom it seemed an elusive dream at best. Peace for the Spirits who had cried out in her own soul, trapped as they were in her memory, wailing their fear that one of their own should be so caught.

She wondered if those Spirits had kept Methos company for the past three years. For all his alliance to the Tribes, the Unified Tribes of the Cherokee Nation, Duncan had never asked of what value his friend might be. He had accepted that Methos had value for his own sake for the sake of the Community, but never a why for the tribes. Kir had not bothered to illustrate the need to him. Selfish in a way, not only for herself but for the Nation. Duncan understood why Hawk of Moons had been unwilling to lend personnel and equipment to his search -- he thought he understood. He might have been very surprised to find out that the Tribal Elders had as great a fear of rescuing the Oldest Immortal as they did of not finding him.

Ancient drums -- the drums of long-dead Storytellers beat through her mind as her heart beat in her breast. She closed her eyes against the evidence and listened to those tales she had been hearing since her childhood. No use at all in telling Duncan or Connor or even Sean that there was as much religion as mercy twisted around this mission to rescue who might well be the other half of Duncan MacLeod's soul. Translating the needs of the Tribes into the terms of the Epic of Gilgamesh might well make more sense to Duncan than anything Kir could try to explain. He had lived and loved and learned with the Lakota. A part of him had died with them -- Kir knew that part of Duncan's history as well as she knew her own. But he could not, and would not, if Kir had anything to say about it, learn the rest of the tale.

She released Sean's hand, unable to touch any longer the son of the man she may well have to betray. Loving Duncan would not stop her betrayal and seeing Methos' face so clearly etched into Sean's would not make it any easier.

"Let's get to it!" she snapped, voice crisp, clear and entirely in control. Her team moved as she and Sean climbed off the mountain.

Tulsa and Connor set the charges while the rest set up a camp of sorts -- quick camp with the bare essentials. There would be no sleep for any of them until they were back on the Trans. Perimeters set and checked and Kir had to grin as Modo, her very own Eyes of God, climbed like a monkey up the side of what had been a building to find his sniper's perch among the pigeons.

The smile faded as those Eyes reported movement from the North. "Land force, Ghost," he reported. "Not large. Two trucks but I don't think its farmers peddling produce. An hour, maybe."

"Shit!" She passed the word and her team, already on alert, suddenly became shadows. She dropped back, pressed between Mac and Sean as the charges were fired.

There seemed to be little difference to the pile of rubble but Connor and Mac were on it in an instant, clearing away the shattered stone, pulverized into more dust.

"They heard that!" Modo reported.

Kir acknowledge. They had brought the tools to dig and Connor took over the jackhammer, breaking through the slab of stone that still blocked what they thought was the entrance to the tunnels below. Mac stood back, Sean his unnoticed support, one large slender hand bracing his father's shoulder and then there was a shout as the slab chattered under the assault.

The Gates of the Underworld might have opened, Kir noted as rank and foul air spiraled upward. The Gods alone knew what else had been buried beneath the fallen palace. More bodies than Kir thought she wanted to count. Masks were passed out and Sean had to physically stop Duncan from entering without one and then urge caution. Stability could not be assured.

"I'll stay up," Connor volunteered but there was no noblesse in the gesture. The older Immortal's face was pale and strained. Kir brushed his cheeks with her fingers. No time to press for the cause of Connor's claustrophobia. There might be later. She hoped.

Lanterns illuminated the ancient passage and it was ancient, the stones of the steps they took downward worn in the center from centuries of footsteps. How apropos, Kir thought as she followed the MacLeods into the darkness. Methos' tomb might well be as old as the man himself.

Not a hundred feet in, Mac stopped, peering forward in confusion then turning again. Very much like a hunting dog on a scent. He backtracked, light falling across the pile of rubble that crowded against the stairs.

"Da," Sean's whisper was like a shout in the confining darkness as Duncan knelt beside the pile, setting his lantern on the steps and began working at the pile. "Da, you'll bring the roof down."

Sean and Kir's lights were on the pile and it was true, the cracked underside of the plaza loomed overhead, the building having driven through the roof to deposit its upper reaches to its lowest depths. The pile Duncan pulled at was like to collapse and give Methos company for his vigil.

Duncan would not be swayed even when they heard the gunfire echoed dully above them.

"Status," Kir hissed, prepared to mount the stairs, almost tripping over a flow of water that trickled down the worn stone and vanished between the blocks.

"They are holding back," Tulsa answered her but Kir could hear Connor close. "Uhm...Connor says to draw your swords."

Another curse. Immortals as well as a recon team. Not a good thing certainly. "Hold them. Get ready to drop back." She redirected her attention to the two men below her. "Mac, we have to go. We can't hold this position."

Duncan made no sign that he had heard her and Sean met her gaze, shaking his head. At this point, this close, they would have to kill the elder MacLeod and carry him out to get him to leave. Kir bit her lip, wincing as she heard the first explosion rock the world above. Dust filtered down on them, settling swiftly, washed away by the thin stream of water on the steps. She studied that stream, thoughts picking the back of her brain as she saw the water drain away into some hidden channel.

Drain? Through rock? She knelt, shining the light on the water. It was disappearing through a minute joint between the two blocks. Tomb. Absolutely. Immortal or not, Methos could not have come to even a semblance of waking buried under tons of debris. Not with the reality of coherent thought that acknowledged his situation.

"Under the stairs," she said softly and leaned over to grip Duncan's shoulder fiercely. "He is under the stairs!" she hissed and then moved upward as a second explosion sounded closer and was answered by the heavy whine of one of the K-30 assault rifles.

"There is something wrong," Connor hissed at her as she came up beside him. "Either they don't know who we are or they do. They are trying to keep us pinned, not trying to end this."

"God! What have you got?" Kir asked.

"They are hovering, not pressing too close. I don't know what they are up to. No one is moving to flank...you'd think they wanted to chat," Modo said.

"What's going on below?" Connor asked, the tone less than casual but not quite insistent.

"Close. I think. Keep them occupied," She said patting his shoulder and ducked down the stairs again.

Half-way down rapid fire sounded close and the passage was rocked by another explosion. Kir swore and jumped as loose stone stated falling down the stairs, Sean steadied her and then turned back again to help his father.

Duncan barely noticed. His hands were bloodied from scrabbling at the masonry, filthy from the dirt and mold. Sean cleared behind him, Kir watching their backs and outside they could hear Connor yelling like a mad man.

The pile shifted and Mac slipped backward coughing as dust rose around them. But the clearing left a hole beneath the stairs. Tiny, too tiny for a grown man.

Only it wasn't. Mac was not even aware of the tears falling as he reached in and felt flesh. Clammy, slimy but flesh. He worried not at all for further injury as he reached in and pulled, felt resistance in the tightly folded body but he finally had the still and near naked form out of the tiny hole.

He was barely recognizable in appearance. Skeletal, his clothes half-rotted of him from three years of leaking water and frigid nights, hot days. He weighed nothing. But his presence was there, strong, solid, muted by his comatose state. Sean pushed past his father, reaching into the hole and feeling around, emerging with Methos' sword and a rotting bag, weight and shape displaying books of some sort.

"Clear!" Kir snapped into her mic and passed Sean's gun back to him as Duncan rose, cradling the frail body in his arms.

Kir couldn't look at the ancient yet. She didn't want to see him. It had been hard enough to watch Mac and Sean fall to pieces periodically under the link that bound them, but to see the physical evidence of what Methos had been enduring was too much right now. She had to concentrate on getting them-all of them-out.

Duncan was in no shape to make any decisions, Sean was some better but he was hovering, hazel eyes wide in a kind of shock. "Connor!" Kir's yell could stop a stampede in full charge. Her team had dropped back and the Trans was on the way.

Mac stubbornly refused help with carrying Methos to the Trans, with Sean and Connor laying down cover fire as he sprinted to the entrance behind Kir and the rest of the team, using his own body as a shield for the frail, limp figure in his arms. Methos had a near-death grip on the front of his coat as he wheezed frantically for air, barely conscious, groaning against the pain of broken bones finally beginning to mend. Mac dumped the Oldest Immortal into a seat unceremoniously, having to pry away those claw-like fingers from his clothes before he could strap him in.

"Come on!" Revas shouted at them, "They're closing in. We've got to get out of here!"

"Hang on," Duncan growled, whether to Kir or Methos, Kir couldn't be sure. As Tulsa and the other mortals on the team dove into the entrance, he grabbed a weapon and headed for the door. He crouched in the doorway, firing toward the Alliance position, yelling for Connor and Sean to make a run for it, but Connor held up his hand for him to stop. In the sudden, deathly silence, Mac felt it; the thrum of another Immortal, not one of the Community.

A large, stocky, bullet-headed bald man stood, moving out from the cover of a broken half-wall, easily holding a green and black fatigue-clad body up with one arm, a sword resting gently against the exposed neck. The body was Sean, red staining one side of his face from a bullet to his brain. Mac's heart faltered, stopped, started, then faltered again as he felt the blood rush from his brain and he almost staggered under the crushing panic that squeezed his chest.

"I am Bar Abbas. I can feel you Duncan MacLeod. I hear you are a big hero. Well, now's your chance Highlander! Surrender or I kill the boy and everyone here! You're even more of a prize than the old man! How about it? You in exchange for all your other little friends. Come to me, and I'll let the rest go." The man signaled with his head, and a dozen fully armed troopers showed themselves scattered in a wide arc behind him.

"Mac, don't!" he heard Kir hiss behind him. He ignored her, stepping into the doorway.

"Let the boy go! Let everyone go, and I'm yours, Bar Abbas. Otherwise we all go down!" Out of the corner of his eye he could see Connor circling, moving from shadow to shadow. He tried to signal his clansman to stay still.

"No, MacLeod! That's what they want. They'll destroy the Community!" Kir insisted, tugging hard on his arm.

He shook her off. "If they've got me, they'll let you go. You've got Methos now. You don't need me, Kir, and I can't let him kill Sean!"

"Let the boy go and walk away!" Mac shouted, stepping full into the doorway, his hands up and weaponless.

"Mac!" Kir was yelling now, reaching for him. Other hands were on him as well, trying to pull him back into the relative safety of the Trans.

As he prepared to step down the ramp, a tall figure rose up behind the troopers like an incarnation of death. Connor had circled around using speed and stealth developed over centuries, and let loose with deadly accuracy. First however, he carefully, deliberately, methodically took aim at his clansman, lifting him off his feet and propelling him into the hovercraft by the sheer force of the three slugs that slammed into his chest. Kir dragged him out of the door and slammed it shut.

"Go," she shouted to Revas as she felt shots thump against the hard hull. She dove for a seat, engines screaming protest as they were pushed to maximum without warm-up.

"Spirits guide us all home," Kir murmured to herself, heartsick at leaving behind any of her team, especially those she loved. But if anyone could take care of himself, it was Connor MacLeod. She had to place her faith in that.

Connor moved behind the troopers, darting from cover to cover, firing the heavy weapon until his entire body was numb from the vibration, until his palms burned and blistered with the heat rising off the metal, until no one was left standing. He was distantly aware that he had taken some hits himself, but had neither the time nor energy to spare to pay attention to it.

Suddenly all seemed unnaturally quiet and he realized there was no more return fire. The silent pause seemed surreal in the early evening light as steam rose off the still, bloody bodies scattered in the rubble that used to be part of one of the great architectural wonders of the Holy Roman empire. He stumbled over the piles of loose stone to where Bar Abbas had fallen, two shots having found their mark, one in his shoulder, one in his neck. He was dead, but only momentarily. It crossed his mind to take the man's head, but the distraction of a Quickening was not one he could afford just now.

Connor grabbed young Sean, pulling him up by the arms and slinging him over his back. Behind the rubble he found one of their vehicles, a military-style all-wheel drive that carried about a half dozen people and their equipment. It required a computer coded key to start, and he lost precious time looking among the bodies, knowing that Bar Abbas was probably already stirring back to life. Finally he pulled the key out of a blood soaked pocket just as he felt Abbas' presence surge back. He sprinted to the vehicle and gunned the motor, spun it around and, holding Sean's body in the tilting, bumping truck with one hand, steering with the other, aimed straight for Abbas who had stumbled to his feet, sword in his hand. He hit the other Immortal, hearing a sickening thump as soft tissue encountered hard metal at 40 km/hr.

"Take that you son-of-a-bitch," he muttered, heading for the hills northeast of the city. He had to find a safe place, to get supplies, to hook back up with Kir and Duncan before they reached England. They had been betrayed. This would be tricky. Very, very tricky.

Methos winced as he felt the power of MacLeod's surge back to life, catching the residue of agony as Duncan's ruined chest fought to heal itself. Combined with the misplaced bones, the overwhelming thirst and weakness that was his universe, it almost sent the old Immortal back into oblivion, but that much desired release wouldn't come.

But the Scot had only one thing on his mind, he pulled himself out of the chair they had strapped him in, leaving a trail of blood from his still-healing chest across the floor of the hovercraft.

"No, Kir!" he gasped. "We can't leave them!"

"Too late, Duncan," she said quietly, calmly. "You've been out for over half an hour. Connor got you good. Knew exactly what he was doing."

Duncan slumped into a seat while he waited for his wounds to heal, looking disconsolately out at the darkness outside the window, his eyes loosing focus as he felt for the presence of his son and his clansman. They were alive, although Sean's presence was barely there. Probably still hadn't recovered from the shot to the head. The boy was still young, only a little over 100 years old. The youngest, possibly the last, of all the Immortals. Had they been captured? Duncan concentrated, his head aching with the effort. He couldn't tell. He sensed anxiety from Connor, but that would be expected. He knew wouldn't be able to rest until he knew for certain that they were safe, that his son was out of harm's way.

But at least he finally had Methos. He turned, meeting pain-filled hazel eyes. No, more than pain, there was anger there and fear and ... hatred.

"Methos?" he said gently, reaching out to place his hand on the painfully thin arm. "You're safe. It's okay." He reached for the water bottle he kept stored in one of the numerous pockets of his fatigues, holding it to Methos' lips. The ancient man drank a few swallows, but then turned his head away, closing his eyes. Already his Immortal healing had improved his color, the fluid they had given him had changed chapped, bloody lips to smooth, unblemished skin in a face that had always emphasized sharp angles, but now looked like a sketchbook for geometric figures.

If the old man didn't want to talk yet, then he would just have to be patient, Duncan decided. Besides, his own mind and heart were reeling with worry for Sean. It seemed he had at long last resolved one unbearable agony, only to be replaced by one equally as painful. He closed his eyes, willing himself to calm, to control. He would be useless to them all if he allowed himself to be overwhelmed with worry.

The skimmer settled gracefully into the ancient hangar outside old East Berlin with a light 'thump.' Modo carefully opened the hatch, lowering to a crouch and ducking out, followed quickly by Tulsa so they could sweep the area for possible hostiles. A different kind of search was being done by Duncan as he sat quietly for a minute, eyes closed, concentrating. The task, which usually gave him a bad headache anyway, was particularly difficult with his mind constantly rechecking the strong connection he had with Sean and the more tenuous one with Connor. That distraction, plus the nearness of Methos, was almost painful in intensity and he found himself distancing himself emotionally from all those concerns in order to achieve any kind of clarity of thought. Sean called it 'zoning out' and hated when his father's face took on that closed, hard, blank expression. But the boy didn't understand just how overwhelming constant, heavy sensory input could be.

His son had never even taken a head and, Duncan firmly told himself, never would if he had anything to say about it. He had been determined from the moment of Sean's birth that the development of the boy's awesome potential would be a matter of life experience rather than the violent, destructive amassing of Quickening power his father had been forced to endure. Duncan was certain Sean had greater inborn talent and power than he or even Methos had acquired in his five millennia. But those gifts would have to be realized with time and patience. They would be the gentle gifts of wisdom, of caring, of love, of life, not of death, of loss, of grief and regret.

These worries intruded again, distracting him, so again he refocused, pushing emotion away, sweeping the area, sensing only the R&R team nearby. He sighed and looked up into Kir's worried face.

"It's clear," he said flatly.

"Okay, people," Kir said in low, even tones. "Let's set up camp here today. We'll move out again at full dark and try to make it across the channel."

Methos had been sleeping during much of the trip. When he had awakened, Duncan was always there, hovering nearby, giving him sips of juice, small bites of food. They hadn't spoken and Duncan hadn't pressed. He could only imagine the shock and trauma of suddenly emerging from three years of semi-conscious hell. That first look, so full of anger and hate, had disappeared behind a careful mask. But Mac knew his friend as well as anyone ever could know a man with over 5,000 years of life experience, and he could see and sense an underlying, almost desperate panic that expressed itself in a tight, curled posture.

As soon as the team had moved out to set up sleeping areas in the old hangar, Duncan knelt in front of his friend of almost two hundred years.

"Methos?" The hazel eyes opened and looked at him without expression.

"They've set up a private tent for you with a cot, if you like," Duncan informed him. Their eyes met as they had so many times before. After a long moment, Methos nodded almost imperceptibly, moving slowly, stiffly, flinching under Duncan's touch, but relying on the muscular Scot to help him to his feet. But legs which had not walked in years wouldn't hold his weight, and MacLeod easily swept the man into his arms and carried him down the ramp, where a tent set up in the far corner of the hangar provided a small measure of privacy.

Duncan found a clean set of fatigues and a large bucket of warm water in the tent. Kir's thoughtfulness, no doubt. He set Methos down on the cot where the man immediately curled over on his side, folded again into a tight ball.

Working methodically, lips pressed together to push away the image of what the old man had endured for so long, MacLeod carefully stripped the rags from the bony body and washed the pale, almost transparent skin. As he did, Methos uncurled slightly, his eyes closed, expression uncertain, as though he were unsure whether he welcomed or loathed the touch.

When he was done and clean clothes now covered the bare body, Mac sat on the floor by the bed for a long time, hoping his friend would talk to him. The longer the silence went on the harder it was to just sit there. MacLeod was desperate for Methos to at least acknowledge his presence.

"Methos?" Duncan finally had to say, "I'm here if you need me, if you want to talk. Do you want me to stay?"

Methos rolled from his back over to his side, facing away. Eventually, the rise and fall of the concave chest was slow and regular and Mac carefully covered the sleeping form with a blanket and slipped away.

Kir felt Mac slip into the double sleeping bag beside her hours after everyone except the person on watch had gone to sleep. She reached for him but he had turned away, his back rigid with worry and tension. She ran her hand along the smooth, warm skin, but he didn't respond. Eventually she gave up, swallowing her anxiety, knowing there was little she could do to comfort him when he got like this. Only Sean and Methos could tease, cajole or irritate the Highlander out from behind the self-protective walls he sometimes built. Methos had once told her that MacLeod hadn't always done that, only after the Community had been formed, making it seem as though he felt responsible for MacLeod's tendency to get cold and hard at times, becoming a single-minded machine, capable of trampling on anyone who got in his way. Kir had added the mystery to the long list of enigmas about the turbulent history between the two most powerful personalities she had ever known.

Mac awoke with a start, feeling like he had just barely fallen asleep. Daylight was just beginning to fade, but the hangar was silent as all the team members had learned to sleep whenever the opportunity presented itself. Then he heard it, a groan, a small cry, a movement. He was on his feet and into Methos' tent in three heartbeats, finding the man writhing in the grip of a nightmare, the echo of which chilled Mac's soul as its tendrils touched his mind.

He gathered the bones held together by thin flesh into his arms, finding the body cold and trembling. He pulled him close into his chest, lending whatever of his strength, his warmth, he could.

"It's okay, Methos," he whispered. "I'm here. The nightmare is over. You're safe," he murmured the words again and again, rocking the man like the child he seemed, so slender, so delicate, so light.

Gradually, the trembling slowed and ceased, and those long, impossibly thin arms wrapped around him, clinging to him tightly, possessively.

"Duncan?" the familiar voice finally rasped.

"Shhh. Yes, Methos. It's Duncan. Sleep now. I'm here."

It was meant to be a reassurance, a comfort, but Methos found himself recoiling from the implication and had he the strength of will or body he would have rejected the physical as well. But he could not. A shudder wracked him at his own weakness for accepting what he found loathsome in the extreme. That he could both crave and despise the strength of the arms that held him, that he needed the reality of the Highlander's strong presence because it was still the only thing that was real to him, even now. In truth, he recoiled as much from his own need. His absolute loathing for the man who held him now brought the string of curses unbidden to his lips. His soft mutterings took a few moments for Duncan to identify but by then the words were spilling out in a steady stream that Methos could neither halt nor control.

Anymore than he could control his own body. The fluids and food they had been coaxing on him sought their natural, if long denied, course and the humiliation of that failure was what finally stopped Methos' multi-lingual tirade as he gave into sobs that also defied his will. Worse still that MacLeod took it all in stride, stripping him down again before cleaning him up. A new presence insinuated itself against Methos' consciousness, Kir's vaguely familiar voice questioning and different hands wrapped a thin blanket around him while MacLeod stripped the cot.

The feminine presence had the benefit of not ripping quite so rawly across his nerves and emotions, but neither was it the same comfort. Stubbornly he refused to answer questions, coaxing the pain that still worked through his body closer as a shield. Immortal healing might well keep his bodily functions working but it could not add muscle or flesh to his frame, only heighten and speed up the recoup of its loss over time. The result being that Methos could feel his own bones rubbing against one another and the shifting of his ribs and hips as Kir surrendered him once more, like an infant, into the Scot's stronger arms.

The distraction had some effect and Methos managed to formulate in words those feelings that had rendered him helpless. "Get the hell away from me, you son of a bitch."

Dark eyes met his in shock but Methos held on to the anger and the hatred and the gut wrenching sense of betrayal until Mac did set him back on the cot and moved away.

Kir laid a hand on Duncan's arm, possibly understanding more than the Highlander when she met the rage burning in the hazel eyes. "Leave him be, Duncan," she murmured. "This is shock. It will pass." He nodded, tight-lipped before wrenching away, almost sending the sentry into a panic as he moved past her, silent as a phantom.

Kir moved back, torn between following MacLeod and knowing that as harshly as Methos had pushed her lover away, the effort had cost the ancient. She hesitated and made her decision, settling next to the cot and pulling her knees to her chest to rest her cheek against them and watch over her reluctant patient.

"I don't want or need you either," Methos murmured.

"No doubt," Kir said understanding more than he realized. "But we have need of you, therefore you will just have to endure," she said and pulled the blanket more securely around the thin shoulders.

Connor drove steadily on back roads, heading generally northeast through the dark. Having explored all of Europe for over 500 years gave him a distinct advantage now that road markings, villages and cities were few and far between. As the fuel gauge dipped dangerously he looked for a town, finally driving through a small village lying in complete darkness in the moonless night. No one wasted electricity for such frivolous uses as night-lights or street lights anymore, and Connor pulled off the road just past the edge of town, maneuvering into a stand of trees for cover. He sat in the dark, patient and still, waiting for Sean to recover, unwilling to leave the boy to reanimate alone. He didn't know how many deaths his clansman's son had suffered, but he doubted there were very many at all, given his over-protective parent.

The very thought of Duncan having a son, a real child of his own, was such a bizarre notion. Immortals didn't have children. But there was no doubt about this lad's genetic heritage. The nose, the mouth, the voice, the hair were all Duncan's. The rest looked much like old Methos which was a hell of a note, and even though Duncan had tried to explain the boy's family tree and the nature of the race of Danaa from which they had all sprung, it hadn't stuck. Oh well, Connor was never one to dwell long on complex puzzles or philosophical issues. In the long run -- and he had always considered the long run -- amusement, taking care of your friends, and survival, in that order, was the only enduring aspect of life's problems that maintained his interest.

Finally, Sean stirred, then groaned then would have yelped in pain if Connor hadn't quickly covered his mouth.

"Quiet lad, or ye'll wake the dead!" he growled.

The boy panted in pain for several minutes, his jaw clenched to prevent himself from crying out as he held his head. "I . . . was . . . dead!" he finally choked out.

Well, at least the lad had a sense of humor. Connor smiled to himself. "Well, we've got a little problem, my boy," he went on while Sean continued to struggle with the agony of reanimation. "We're somewhere north of Rome, in hostile territory, low on fuel and separated from the R&R team. Any ideas?"

"Just gimme a minute, dammit!" Sean whispered impatiently. He had only died once before. It was planned. Plotted actually, between himself and Methos, and against his father's wishes. But that had been relatively simple, a bullet to the heart. This ... his head felt like it was going to explode and the pain was fading so slowly! How did his father stand it? He always seemed to be on the receiving end of a bullet or a knife or some other lethal implement.

"It will be dawn soon, lad. Don't have time to wait while you lay about here. I'm going to find a vehicle or two to siphon off some fuel. Be back in awhile."

Sean moved awkwardly to follow but before he could even open the door, his cousin had disappeared completely, soundlessly. If Sean hadn't been able to sense his Immortal presence, he would have thought it magic.

In the hour it took for Connor to complete his mission, Sean discovered that the pain in his head was gone and for a few minutes panic set in. He'd been on numerous dangerous missions in the last few years, but always with the full R&R team at his back, and his father firmly at his side. As he purposefully calmed his rapid heart rate with meditations that had been methodically drilled into him practically from birth, he realized upon reflection that he actually felt . . . good. Kind of excited in a scary way. Then his heart practically leapt out through his mouth as Connor suddenly just appeared at the truck's window, tapping on the glass.

"What!" Sean gasped, having to again run through his meditations.

Connor held up two large canisters of fuel, a satisfied smirk on his face. "Got enough to get us almost to Paris, I think," he whispered loudly. "Made us a plan yet, boy?" Without waiting for an answer, Connor emptied one container into the gas tank and loaded the other in the back, climbed in and started the motor.

Finally on the road again, Sean turned to his companion with a pleased, knowing look. "The Pell Trackers. They can find us with the trackers, but we have to be in a fairly secure spot before we use them, otherwise that asshole, Bar what's-his-name, might find us."

"Oh, he already did that, lad."

"What do you mean?"

"He was waiting for us. Knew we were in the area and waited until Mac pulled Methos out to close in."

"Is that how we got separated?"

"Well, sort of."

"What do you mean, well, sort of?" Sean asked suspiciously.

"Well, you went down and . . . well things got a little out of control after that."

"What did Da do?" Sean asked in a resigned tone, "Offer himself up as hostage to save everybody?"

His companion pursed his lips, but kept silent.

"Shit!" Sean finally whispered, suddenly heartsick. "Did they take him?"

"No," Connor said jauntily. "I shot him, then blasted the holy hell out of Bar Abbas' little outing while Kir grabbed Mac and took off like a bat outta hell."

"Did they get Methos out okay?"

"From what I could see. He looked in pretty terrible shape, though."

They rode in silence for a minute. Sean turned to look again at Connor, his light brown eyes suddenly hooded. "Somebody betrayed us, didn't they? Someone who knew where we were going."

"I always knew the MacLeod's were a bright bunch, although it took your father awhile to show it," Connor said in his odd, sibilant baritone.

"Well, if we're headed north towards Paris, maybe we can contact Amanda and she can provide us a safe house where we can use the trackers," Sean suggested.

"Amanda!" Connor spat. "She's nothing but trouble. We can't trust her."

"Do you have a better idea?"

Silence.

"Well?"

"I'm thinking!"

"Oh, well I'll be very quiet then. I wouldn't want to disturb a genius at work."

"Cute. Watch yourself, lad. Just because you're the son of Duncan MacLeod doesn't mean you can't earn the back of my hand, or even the back of my sword, if you annoy me too much."

"I can handle myself with a sword just fine, Connor."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really. I had a very good teacher, better than you."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really."

"I was the one taught your Da to fight, ye little twit."

"Only the first of many, old man. He's the best there is."

"That has yet to be seen, hasn't it, little one."

"Stop doing that! I'm over 150 for God's sake! I've been fighting this war for years. I've killed and seen my friends die. I'm not a child, so stop treating me like one." The bantering tone was gone.

Connor drove for awhile in silence.

"Tisn't easy being his son, is it? Growing up in the shadow of a legend."

"Two legends, actually. But, no, it wasn't easy. Still isn't. But he's a good man, a good teacher, a strong leader and ... lord knows he loves me." The last came out with a sigh of something almost like regret.

"Feeling a little stifled are we?"

"Yeah, I guess. Sometimes. He has definite ideas about how I should live my life. Doesn't leave me a lot of room for experimentation. I guess it might've been okay if this bloody war hadn't started, throwing us all so tightly together with him the glue that binds the whole Community. He's even decided that I should never take a Quickening, afraid of what it'll do to me. You know he's stepped in three times, either stopping a battle or taking over, just to keep me from taking a head?" Sean shook his head in frustration. "I know he means well, but . . . he can't protect me forever."

"Unfortunately, lad, he can at least attempt to do just that." Connor looked sideways at his young kinsman, finding himself feeling surprisingly parental towards the lad. "Look, Sean, he hates the killing more than anyone, and he knows it can damage the soul. But especially the first Quickenings are . . . they're erotic, they're powerful, they're stunning, they're fascinating . . . it can be instantaneously addictive. It's happened to a lot of us. It takes all too long to realize that we're talking about taking a life, not just taking power, and there's ultimately a terrible price to be paid. Duncan's taken too many and now each one is an increasing agony of power overload. I know Methos doesn't take heads much anymore. I'm sure it's for the same reason. Your father just doesn't want you to start down that road."

"It's a road we all travel, Connor," Sean said quietly. "I don't have the slightest desire to kill anyone or anything, but if I value honor and integrity, the things most important to Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, how can he justify not letting me fight my own battles, whatever the outcome!"

"You've got a point, my lad. I assume you've had this conversation with your Da, though."

Sean's laugh was humorless. "Oh, yeah. Like talking to a rock."

"Aye. That it would be, no doubt."

They drove in silence for a few minutes, both realizing the dawn was turning black-on-black shadows to soft outlines of gray and green bushes and trees. They would have to stop soon and find a hiding place during the day.

Connor spotted an overgrown road to one side and turned off, glad that the truck was built for off road travel. The rutted path led to an abandoned farmhouse. While it was dusty and the roof probably leaked badly, it would do for a temporary hiding place. As they unloaded their gear and prepared to sleep in turns with Sean taking the first watch, Connor put his big hand on the boy's lean shoulder. They were of equal height and looked about the same age, but the depth behind the old warrior's eyes told of centuries of wisdom.

"Look, Sean. While you're with me, at least, you're not a lad, not a boy. I won't do that anymore, or if I do I expect ye to call me on't. If we get into trouble, I'll watch your back and I expect you to watch mine. Equals." He grasped the younger Immortal's arm just below the elbow. A clansman's grip.

Sean's eyes shown with gratitude as he settled in to watch over his kinsman's sleeping form.

The skimmer was loaded once again as they prepared to move out, and Duncan hung back while Kir and Modo helped Methos climb unsteadily up the ramp into the vehicle. He was trying mightily to tell himself that the old Immortal's reaction was completely understandable. That he was in shock and lashing out at whoever was nearby. But it was still hard. With Sean in jeopardy and Methos here but physically and emotionally almost unrecognizable, he felt a little like the threads of his life, always frayed, were quickly unraveling.

The skimmer engines whined to a painful pitch as the vehicle rose a few inches on its column of air and moved elegantly out of the hangar into the night. The vehicle glided out over the cracked, weed-strewn asphalt. Modo did a electronic scan for nearby vehicles and gave the all clear. Revas revved the engines and the skimmer rose vertically to rooftop level, then higher - low enough to avoid satellite detection but high enough to mask the engine noise. Revas moved the craft slowly northwest and had almost cleared the old military airport when they all felt and heard it. A loud bang, and the craft suddenly lost height, dipping sickeningly to starboard.

"Status," Revas barked, hauling hard on the controls.

"Right stabilizer just blew," Claire, in the co-pilot's seat, shouted over the noise of the now screaming engines. "Only way to compensate is to shut down the left," she said, hitting the controls, making the ship swing wildly down on the other side and around, losing both height and forward movement.

"Get us down, Revas," Kir ordered. "Now!"

"No problem with that, Ghost," Revas growled with a grim smile. "The only problem is getting us there in one piece." His hands played over the controls like a piano virtuoso, but even so the craft lurched in stomach wrenching motions tilting and almost rolling, finally hitting hard on the starboard side before it settled with a slow whump to the ground.

They all sat for a few seconds in the sudden silence, everyone breathing hard at the adrenaline rush the wild ride had instigated. Mac quickly unbuckled and checked on each of the mortals strapped in the back. Looked like one had suffered a dislocated shoulder and Eddie Two Horses had a bad cut on his forehead. Methos had hardly even registered the event, and when Mac approached him, drew away.

Mac sighed in frustration. "Well, looks like we're here to stay for awhile," he said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

"Revas, let's see how bad the damage is," Kir ordered, unstrapping and heading down the ramp with the other team members. "The rest of you see if you can find anything to camouflage the shuttle."

Mac moved down the ramp with her. "I'll find us some shelter and get the wounded taken care of," he said softly, squeezing her shoulder. He could feel the tension in the hard muscles. This was her team and he had put them at risk. It was one thing for an Immortal to go into dangerous territory, but these mortals. The price they paid could be very high. Too high. They both felt the weight of that responsibility, but Mac knew Kir would never forgive herself if they lost one of them on this improbable mission.

By the time the night was gone and dawn made them dangerously vulnerable, they had hauled the skimmer by hand partially underneath some trees, then cut enough branches from nearby undergrowth to disguise the craft, at least to the casual overhead observer. This part of the base was primarily old metal quonset huts, some with rusted out double-decker bunk beds and ratty, stained mattresses. Some with what used to be old offices and meeting rooms scattered with weather-beaten, rickety chairs, a few tables and desks. Leaking roofs had made most of the furniture unusable, but they found a few chairs and an old table they put in one of the offices to use for a meeting space. The team scattered, searching out the livable rooms for a few private, habitable spaces, especially for Methos whom they all treated with awe and deference, even though he spoke almost not at all. They instinctively felt he should have a space to himself.

Mac had gone to work setting the injured shoulder, marveling at the stoicism of the young man as he hardly cried out when Mac moved the joint back into place. Eddie's cut was stitched and bandaged and by noon they had settled in for the long haul.

Kir, Revas, Mac and Claire met in the separate little office they had set up to assess their options.

"Well, it's not a disaster, but it ain't great news, either," Rivas reported.

Claire put a complex machined piece onto the table. "The right stabilizer on the compressor took a hit, but it was only after we stopped and the engines cooled down that we lost pressure for air flight. We have some welding and cutting tools on board, but they're not made for delicate work like this, and we may have to jury rig something," Claire said, wiping her forehead tiredly, leaving a streak of black grease. "It may take a day or two at least. I can't really tell."

Mac picked up the piece, examining it curiously. He loved to tinker with engines. "I'll help," he offered.

Claire blushed as she met his dark eyes. The famous and handsome Immortal intimidated her, but she knew her business and wasn't about to let anyone muck up the repair. "This is state-of-the-art equipment Mr. MacLeod," she said softly.

He chuckled. "I'll do whatever you say, Claire. I may have the reputation for being a little old fashioned, but I'm not entirely behind the times, I assure you."

"Okay," Kir sighed. "You two work on the stabilizer and the rest of us will make sure we've got supplies to last us, and will more thoroughly scout out the area. Mac, is Eddie okay for scouting duty?"

"Yeah. No concussion, just a nasty cut. I don't want him doing a lot of heavy activity, though."

They all went about their separate duties, and Kir settled Methos into one of the smaller offices next to a room she prepared for herself and Mac. Methos had finally started to eat again, suddenly evidently determined to regain his weight and strength, but still not talking. He tolerated Kir's presence and pretty much ignored everyone else.

As evening fell once again, Kir set sentries and went to visit the workroom Claire and Mac had set up. He looked up as she came in, sensing her presence, but Claire was absolutely focused on her task, welding goggles on as she meticulously tried to rework the piece to make it function. Mac had taken the entire unit apart and had its components spread across two desks. Kir nodded her head towards the door, and Mac followed her outside.

It was cool in the night air, making gooseflesh rise on her arms until Duncan circled her into his chest, holding her close and kissing her forehead. They were almost of equal height, and she took his face in her hands, examining it closely. His eyes were dark from long, sleepless days and nights and his face was tense with worry.

"He'll be okay, Duncan," she whispered. "Connor is with him."

Mac snorted. "Somehow, I don't find that particularly reassuring." He put his arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the quarters they had set up. "They're alive, I know that. I think I'd know if they'd been taken prisoner. Beyond that," he shrugged.

"Well, they've got the trackers, and both of them know France like the back of their hand. My guess is they'll head there. The best we can do . . ." she stopped and turned to him, looking him in the eye. "The best you can do is to not drive yourself nuts with worry."

"What? Me, worry?" he asked with a smile. "How's Methos?"

"Speaking of worrying . . ." she added with an ironic twist to her mouth, and then sighed. "I honestly don't know, Mac. He's . . . full of anger. The rage inside is eating him up. Time and a return of strength is the only thing I know to help him. I think you ought to just stay clear. He'll come to you when he's ready."

"It's more complicated than that, Kir. You know that, especially with Sean missing. He loves Sean, too. He just shows it a little differently."

"I know. But if anything dire comes up, you two will just have to deal with it. You've lived with this connection for over a hundred years, in good times and bad. Your friendship has survived this long, MacLeod. I assume you'll get through this, too. At least he's out of that horrible hole."

They had reached the door to their temporary quarters. "Coming to bed?" she asked, laying her hand on his chest in invitation.

He took her long, brown fingers in his blunt, callused ones and kissed them gently. "I need to help Claire and . . ." he looked at the adjacent door where Methos could be heard moving inside. "I don't think I could sleep anyway."

"Don't push the margins too hard, Duncan. We need you fully functional," Kir reprimanded.

"Yes, Ghost," he said with a teasing smile, kissed her gently and slipped soundlessly away.

PART TWO


	2. Connor & Sean's Big Adventure

Dusk settled slowly over the Italian countryside as the change in temperature brought mist up out of the ground, filling the atmosphere with an eerie, almost mythical quality. Connor woke Sean, who had a marvelous ability to sleep deeply, almost instantaneously. The result of a clear conscience, no doubt, Connor decided.

"Ready to rock and roll?" Connor asked as they finished loading the truck.

"Where are we rocking and rolling to?" the younger man asked.

"Well, I figure we're somewhere in the vicinity of Pavia. There's a back road across the border from here. Unless the border security is a hell of a lot better than the last time I was through here, it should be a clear shot to France. Then we have to find a place to go to ground, maybe around Paris."

"Amanda, you mean," Sean said.

"Yeah," Connor sighed heavily. "Amanda."

He started the truck and drove into the rising mist.

Somehow Connor appeared to know exactly where he was going, following unmarked roads through the darkened countryside as they made their way north toward France.

"So, what happened in Pavia?" Sean finally ventured, just to make conversation.

Connor gave him a surprised look. "What makes you think anything happened in Pavia?"

Sean smiled. "Oh I don't know. I have an instinct for such things. A tone of voice, a look."

"Or maybe its those, what, three? degrees in psychology and psychiatry you have?"

Sean chuckled. "With all the angst I live around, somebody has to be in charge of the sanity factor."

"How do you gauge sanity in an Immortal, Sean?" Connor asked, genuinely curious.

"It's not always easy. The killings, the Quickenings, the psychic connections, the centuries of experience and loss. I'm not sure that any Immortal is completely sane by mortal standards. It's all relative. But you didn't tell me what happened in Pavia."

"It was a long time ago. A small adventure in the early 20th Century. I, uh, courted a local young lady, not realizing she was the daughter of the local crime boss. There was a small misunderstanding about my intentions and they got a little, uh, excited."

"It take it that's how you learned about the back roads across the border?"

"Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. She had a lot of relatives. All male. All carrying guns. Very big guns."

They drove through the night, Connor either driving or navigating, making their way north into France, moving gradually west. The going was slow since they stayed away from the main roads and stopped several times when traffic got a little to heavy for comfort in their high-profile military style truck. It was almost dawn again by the time they got to the outskirts of Paris, when their luck finally ran out.

Sean knew it was his fault as soon as he saw the blue flashing light in the rear view mirror. He was tired and had lost his concentration while Connor dozed in the seat next to him. His expletive woke his clansman, who turned to look at the large police van following them.

"Floor it!" Connor said grimly.

"But . . ."

"Just do as I say, dammit!"

Sean jammed the accelerator to the floor and the truck jumped ahead, pressing them into their seats as they rounded a sharp curve. The grating undulations of the siren and the flashing light only seemed to draw closer, though, and Sean's mouth went dry as they were now committed to a probably fatal confrontation.

"Jesus, Connor, we could probably have talked out way out of this one!" Sean shouted over the screech of tires as they rounded another corner too fast, almost tipping over. He spared a quick look at Connor MacLeod and gulped as he saw the mad, excited gleam in the old warrior's eyes. Shit! thought Sean. He likes this stuff!

Time lost any meaning for Sean as the chase wound through an abandoned village and into the suburbs of Paris. The hideous whine of the siren rang interminably in his ears, along with Connor's shouts about his driving abilities. He did manage to pull a little ahead, though, and was beginning to think they might be able to lose their pursuers in the familiar maze of Paris streets when he saw another blue flashing light join the one in his rear view mirror.

"Connor?" The man was studying the road ahead. "Connor, look behind us."

"Shit," the man whispered. "That means there may be more of them ahead of us. We'll have to go to Plan B."

"Plan B?! What the hell was Plan A?"

"I dunno. I'm making this up as we go," Connor replied with a childish grin.

With that unreassuring remark, Connor dove into the back of the truck, grabbing for handholds to keep from being thrown around as Sean whipped around corners at a speed the utility vehicle was never intended to travel. He grabbed various pieces of gear, pulling them back into the front seat with him with remarkable coordination given the forces working against him.

Just then Sean spotted more blue flashing lights up ahead.

"Connor!" Sean called with a tiny bit of panic in his voice.

"Okay, Sean. Here we go. Take the next right. Now!"

"But we'll never . . .!"

"Do it!"

He did. The truck tires screeched in protest, the entire vehicle shuddering under the gravity forces going in too many different directions as the left wheels rose up off the ground. He had turned off onto a side road leading down into some woods, but it was too much, and the truck, in apparent slow motion, rolled over on its right side, tumbling, ripping through bushes and trees, metal ripping away with a noise that reached the upper registers of hearing, finally coming to a dirt and dust-strewn halt up against a stand of trees.

The two men had been tossed and thrown, breath knocked out of them and more than a few bones broken and serious contusions, but each knew they had no time to nurse their injuries. With a groan, Sean, hanging sideways towards Connor in his seat, unclipped his seatbelt, rolling with a tangle of bruised limbs onto Connor. Without a seatbelt on, the Scotsman had been banged about quite a bit more, but met his young clansman's eyes with a mischievous gleam, even with the blood pouring off a cut in his forehead.

"I told you it was time to rock and roll," he barely managed to choke, wheezing from broken ribs.

Lips pressed together to push away pain, Sean found some awkward footing and pushed up on the driver's door, tossing out the gear Connor had gathered and climbing out. He could hear screeching tires and see blue lights flashing far above, but it would be several minutes before they would be reached. Their pursuers would also not expect any passengers in the vehicle to be capable of a getaway, so that would also buy them a little extra precious time.

Sean heaved up to help Connor out, trying (not entirely successfully) to ignore a badly sprained knee, more cuts than he cared to think about and what may have been a broken wrist. Grabbing all the gear he could carry, and slinging Connor's arm over his shoulder, he started them on the dangerous trek further down the hillside.

"Wait!" Connor gasped.

"Christ, what now!" Sean growled.

Connor turned, limping and stumbling, back to the vehicle. He reached in, his legs dangling out for a few seconds, then emerged with a long, wrapped package in his hand.

"Never travel without my sword, boy!" Connor grinned.

"You told me you weren't going to call me that," Sean murmured, once again taking Connor's weight to get them down the hill.

"Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry." Connor said contritely. "You know your father once got pissed off at me for the same thing. It was right after the . . ."

"Shut up and walk," Sean barked at him, and at least for a few minutes, Connor MacLeod did as he was told.

A few steps later this time it was Sean that paused and turned, drawing Connor's raised eyebrow and then a smile of approval as the young Immortal, one-handed, pulled up the A-30 slung over his shoulder and managed a direct hit to the vehicle's gas tank which exploded with a high-pressure 'whoomp,' sending both of them staggering backward. The magic of Immortal healing quickly make itself felt and the two men slipped silently into the woods, now cast into a surreal light by the flickering of the bright flames from the burning truck.

It was mid-morning by the time they reached a part of Paris Sean could really recognize. The City of Lights, where he had spent most of his growing-up years and at least one generation beyond, was decimated, blasted by the war the Eastern Dawn had brought to the world in the name of their version of social justice and equity. His own people had participated in this, actually helped made it possible, and seeing the devastation it had wrought first hand made his heart race and his blood boil. All as a result of unintended consequences of the actions of well-meaning men, his own father first among them.

All they had wanted to do was to stop the Gathering, the mindless killing of one Immortal by another. His father had sacrificed almost everything he was to stop the endless cycle of death, only to have the worst of the Immortals, now freed from the obsession of the Game, then join forces with the worst mortal humanity had to offer, grabbing for power under the guise of control of the teaming masses of poor who had finally, inevitably, rebelled.

Ah, Darius, Sean thought. Did you have any idea what your deepest, most profound beliefs, would bring about? Darius had been a saint among Immortals, an ancient monk and former brilliant soldier and strategist who had spent his last millennia helping mortal-kind, serving as counselor to and providing safe haven for Immortals throughout the world on the holy ground that also served as his home.

But he had a plan, shared only with Methos, his friend, the oldest of their Race. It was a wild belief, a hope, a last and greatest dream - that one Immortal, one whom others of his race would trust, one who had enough power, strength, and talent could stop the Gathering and end the slaughter that Immortals had been inflicting on one another since before recorded history. That plan was realized in Duncan MacLeod.

But Darius' life was cut short before his dream came to fruition. The Watchers, mortals dedicated to the secret observance and recording of Immortal lives, had a secret faction determined to annihilate Immortals entirely. Those rebels had taken the ancient, saintly Darius' head on holy ground with no other Immortal there to take the Quickening that was his rightful legacy. It was only years later, with the growing Gathering madness overwhelming the entire Immortal race, driving them all relentlessly towards annihilation, that Methos at last took action, manipulating, cajoling, forcing the relatively young Scot into accepting the role Darius had foreseen. At Methos' near-insistence, Duncan finally took the Quickening of the ancient general/priest that had resided in the stones of the ancient sanctuary, an act that laid on him the mantel of the old monk's dream.

And it had almost worked. MacLeod's power, bolstered by Darius' Quickening and those other ancient wells of power his tumultuous life had already forced on him, was almost enough. His life, lived as a clan chieftain in service to those he called friend or even honorable acquaintance, had earned him the trust of his Race, and they gave over that trust to him. The Community was formed. A joining of Quickenings through MacLeod that banished the lust for killing, that stopped the Gathering and very nearly stopped the Game - the endless struggle to be the last Immortal. Being the sole receptacle of that bottomless well of power had almost destroyed his father, but it also had other effects unforeseen by anyone.

The advent of a highly technical society inevitably revealed Immortals' existence, and, once known, Immortals around the world were sought out and either used, experimented on, deified or hated.

Most Immortals generally went underground, hiding their identities, but some found mortal enclaves accepting of who and what they were without either using them or deifying them. Such was the Cherokee Nation, now in tenuous control of the southern half of what had been the old United States. Others used their talents, their power, their wealth, to secure their freedom of action by become part of the power elite of the Eastern Dawn, an alliance rising out of Old China and eastern soviet countries, all in the name of the betterment of humankind, of course.

Sean knew he was lucky indeed to have had the relative security of the two most powerful of his kind watching over him while he grew up during the past century of cataclysmic change. Otherwise, as the last born Immortal he would have undoubtedly ended up as some government tool, cannon fodder or guinea pig. Looking over the desolate landscape of what had once been his home city made that lesson painfully clear.

"Sean?"

Connor's voice brought him out of his depressing ruminations.

"Yeah?"

"D'you suppose Amanda can get us some new clothes?" He tugged at his stained, torn, blood spotted and now-foul smelling fatigues as they walked along a deserted, trash strewn alley near what used to be the Rive Gauche. "We need something a little less . . . military. I was thinking along the lines of a nice cashmere sweater and wool pants."

Sean looked at the older man in surprise. "Why do you care, Connor? You always look like you slept in your clothes no matter what you're wearing."

Connor sighed. "I know. I can't figure out why. You and Mac always look like you stepped off a magazine cover. How do you do it?"

"What brought all this up, anyway?" Sean asked.

Connor shrugged. "Well, I know its been a few years since you've seen Amanda. . ."

"About fifteen, actually."

"Well, it's been a lot longer for me, almost fifty, I think. And now that she and Mac aren't currently keeping house . . ."

"Actually, I don't think Amanda ever exactly kept house. . ."

Anyway, I thought it'd be nice if I got cleaned up a little, made a good impression."

Sean glanced at the older MacLeod out of the corner of his eye. "Why you horny old bastard! I thought you didn't like Amanda."

"I said I didn't trust her, not that I didn't like her. Amanda is very hard not to like, at least in certain ways. And as long as we're going to get thrown together, I just thought..."

"Right. I know what you thought. Well, keep it in your pants for now, Connor. We need her to get us out of here, not to want us to stay!"

"I'm touched," Connor said with a smile.

"What do you mean?"

"That you would have such faith in my sexual prowess that you would know that Amanda would want me to stay."

Sean snorted. "Well, you are a MacLeod, after all, even if you are a little long in the tooth."

Connor whapped his young clansman upside the head for that remark.

Sean led them toward an old building on the Rue St. Germaine, slipping into a doorway to watch the entrance across the street.

"At least Maurice's is still open," Sean whispered. "I was afraid it had closed down with everything else. If luck is with us, it's still a Watcher hang out."

They sat in the doorway until long after dark. Connor had folded into a compact package and was sound asleep when Sean nudged him.

"There," Sean whispered. "I know her. She used to work for Da when the Watchers were helping him track the Community. Stay here," he instructed.

A stocky woman in her mid-forties had come out of the restaurant and headed up the street, with Sean following soundlessly behind. A few seconds later, Connor also became part of the shadows in their wake.

"Marie?"

The woman stopped and looked around nervously, spotting the outline of a man stepping into the light behind her.

"What! Who is it? What do you want?" She reached into her purse. These days, there was no doubt she would carry protection.

"It's Sean, Marie. Sean MacLeod." The man stepped further into the light, revealing a lean stubble-shadowed face, hazel eyes and a warm smile. The hair was dark and thick, a little too long for today's military style fashions as it curled softly below his ears.

"Sean! My God, you scared me!" she said breathlessly, then looked quickly up and down the street, pulling him into a darkened doorway. "What are you doing here? Don't you know how dangerous it is? The Eastern Dawn has spies everywhere."

Connor suddenly just appeared in the doorway beside them, again generating a gasp of fright from their mortal friend. "Connor MacLeod. Jesus, can't you make a little noise or something. You guys are taking years of my life here!" she said breathlessly.

"I'm sorry, Marie," Sean said with a smile. "We're just trying to be careful, for both your sake and ours." He leaned up against the building. "How's Andre? How are the Watchers doing here?" he asked.

"The Dawn bastards killed Andre two years ago," she said with a hard edge in her voice. "They're after all the Watcher records, so we have to be very careful. Maurice's is the drop point for anything we can find out." Her eyes narrowed as she looked back and forth between the two MacLeod's. "Rumor has it that Duncan was going to try another rescue mission to pull Methos out of Rome."

Connor and Sean shared looks. "Well," said Sean, "It seems our information isn't as secure as it needs to be."

"Is that why you're here? Is your dad okay? Did you get Methos?" she asked anxiously.

"Dad's fine, and as for Methos, well I can't say for sure. We got separated and now I need to find a way to get back in touch with the team. Look, Marie, can you tell me how to find Amanda? She's our best hope for getting out of here."

"Amanda!" the woman spat. "I hope you're not going to trust her. She'd steal the ring off the Pope's finger if she got within kissing distance!"

Through a combination of pressing need and irresistible MacLeod charm, she gave them a location, with strong, motherly admonitions to be careful. Sean gave her a big hug and a kiss that left the woman blushing and breathless.

"You give my best to Duncan," she said, pushing an errant lock of hair off his forehead with a sigh. "You remind me so of him. I had a terrible crush on him, you know," she added with a shy smile. "We all miss him and worry about him, and Adam and about you especially."

"Thank you, Marie. And don't worry about us, we can take care of ourselves. You just be careful. Don't take any unnecessary risks," Sean reminded her.

"We have a part to play in this little drama, too, Sean MacLeod. We pledged to help your father stop the Game. I still believe in that, it's just that the Game has gotten a lot more complicated," she said sternly before turning to walk away. Then she stopped and turned back. "A shorter life span makes it all the more important to spend it doing something that makes a difference, you know." Then she stepped out of the street lamp, turned the corner and was gone. Sean knew that the likelihood of him ever seeing her again was almost nil.

"You want me to what?!" Amanda yelped, pacing around her small, dingy apartment in agitation.

"We need a safe place to turn on our trackers so the R&R team can find us, Amanda," Sean said patiently, again. They had found a café she frequented, then hung around until they felt the presence of another Immortal, at which point she warily found them and after a brief kiss for each, led them on a circuitous route to her apartment, all of them checking constantly to see if they were being followed.

"Why should I do that?" she asked, arms crossed defiantly. "Life is hard enough as it is now, without putting my ass on the line for the likes of the MacLeod boys. After all, it isn't like you were prepared to risk anything for me," she said pointedly, looking directly at Connor with no small amount of hostility.

"Risk anything?! Risk anything?" Connor's voice rose a couple of octaves as he stalked toward the lovely, dark-haired, sylph-like figure. "Dammit woman, just because I wouldn't captain a yacht you wanted to steal to elude the Monte Carlo authorities after you stole from the casino, you lifted my passport and left a trail of evidence connecting me to the crime. I rotted in jail for six months before I could prove I wasn't even in the country at the time!" He moved closer, then closer, but Amanda didn't back down, waiting until their eyes were inches apart.

"Well, it's not because you weren't invited, Connor," she purred, placing her hands on his chest and moving in close.

"All right, all right, you two, cut it out!" Sean intervened, moving between them before they got totally off the subject at hand.

"Amanda, please! Mac has found Methos," he whispered. "We need to get both of them back to safety and you know as well as I do that Da won't leave without the whole team."

She looked at the younger Immortal affectionately. "I know he won't leave without you, Sean. As for you," she looked at the elder MacLeod, "he probably figures you're a terrible influence and would just as soon leave you behind!" After a minute she sighed and ran her hand through her short hair distractedly. "Okay, okay. But I have a condition."

"Amanda, we don't have anything of value," Connor growled.

Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. "Oh, yes, you do. You can get me the hell out of here," she said harshly. "Take me with you when you go."

The two men looked at each other.

"Amanda," Sean said sadly, the Trans-skimmer holds a limited number of people. The rescue team is a full load. We'd have to leave someone else behind."

"Well, you'll have to leave someone behind, then," she said defiantly. "That's my price, Sean."

Connor cocked his head to Sean, indicating a need to speak in private. They moved to a far corner, barely even whispering, knowing that the Immortal woman, twice Connor's age, had hearing far more sensitive than the norm.

"We have to agree, Sean," Connor said. "We'll figure out what to do about it when the skimmer gets here."

"You're not going to pull a MacLeod on me are you, Connor?" Sean asked suspiciously.

"A MacLeod?" Connor sounded offended.

"Yeah. One of those self-sacrificing moments of sublime stupidity, where you give Amanda your seat on the trans."

Connor chuckled. "For Amanda? I don't think so. You have no idea of the trouble she's caused me over the centuries. No, a little double-cross would not hurt my conscience even a little."

Sean frowned. Unfortunately, a double-cross would hurt his conscience, a lot. But Connor was right. Solve one problem at a time.

Amanda let them use her shower and found them some clothes. They were not of the cashmere sweater variety as Connor had hoped, but the standard-issue coveralls whose use was encouraged by the Eastern Dawn were probably better anyway. With them, they would more likely blend in with the rest of the city's population. The major difference that made them stand out now was the fact that they walked without fear hunching their shoulders or lowering their eyes to the ground.

By the time Connor had showered and changed, he found Sean sound asleep, draped improbably over a couch way too small to hold him. Amanda had thrown a blanket over him and was stuffing their stained fatigues into the trash.

Connor came up behind her and circled her with his arms, bending to kiss the nape of her elegant neck.

"Stop it, Connor!" Amanda whispered. "You'll wake Sean."

"He's hardly a child, Amanda. And it's been a long, long time."

"And it'll be longer still, you great oaf," she growled, removing his arms and continuing her chore. "Just because I seem to have a weakness for MacLeods doesn't give you the right to assume anything."

"Not assuming, just hoping," Connor said a little wistfully, softly stroking her shoulders, moving close so that her back was lightly touching his chest so she would be aware of his arousal throbbing against her lower back. He circled her in his arms again, pulling her close.

Amanda's heart stirred at the feel of the strong arms around her, the smell of soap and masculine hormones. Connor was right, it had been a long time. She turned and let him run his big hands up her back, leaned into his kiss, opened her mouth, inviting him in.

"Ahem!"

They stopped, turning to meet Sean MacLeod's amused gaze. "Could you two take it somewhere else? At least one of us would like to get a little sleep around here."

So they did.

After nightfall and a few hours of sleep Amanda led her two guests, faces buried deep in the collars of the coats she had provided, through a maze of back alleys in the more blasted-out part of town, to an area where a few old warehouses remained standing. At first glance they appeared deserted, but Sean and Connor noted the barely visible outline of sentries on each of the building's rooftops, and the accidental-looking but nonetheless effective barricades at each of the street entrances.

"Remember, let me do the talking," Amanda instructed as they approached the middle warehouses side door.

"As if we could ever get a word in edgewise," Connor muttered under his breath.

Amanda shot him an annoyed look, then rapped her knuckles on the metal door. A brute of a man, almost 300 pounds. and at least six and a half feet tall, threw open the door, leveling a very lethal looking Israeli-made 100-round, automatic rifle at them.

"Hey, Carlo," Amanda smiled, raising her hands unthreateningly in the air. "Remember me?"

"Yeah, Amanda, I knew it was you, but who the hell are these guys?"

"Friends, Carlo. I've known 'em for a long time. Just got into town. Is Nardo around?"

"Nardo's always around, Amanda. You know that. He expecting you?"

"No, but you know he's always glad to see me," she said, easily slipping past him, her hand brushing his cheek provocatively.

The two other Immortals followed, eyed closely by the suspicious guard as he nodded to another man, signaling him to follow the trio.

Amanda led them through the warehouse, which was piled high with contraband of every possible description - weapons, food, clothing, luxury goods. It was an astonishing variety considering the fact that normal trade and commerce had been virtually non-existent for over five years.

As they moved toward the back of the huge building, first Connor, then Sean felt the uneasy chill of the presence of another Immortal. They shared a look of wary concern. Amanda cast them a look over her shoulder.

"Don't worry, guys. He's just a local hotshot. Thinks he's a lot tougher than he is. He has no idea how old I am and has never really had to face another Immortal worth his salt. If he knew who you really were, Connor, he'd probably shit in his pants. He's useful, though. Keeps me in the money and takes all the heat."

By the time she finished her explanation, they had climbed the rickety stairs to the second level at the back of the building. Amanda barely paused to tap on the glass before she opened the door and went in, followed closely by the two formidable men who followed her, then the gun-toting guard who had trailed at a slight distance.

The new Immortal had stood, obviously, when he felt another Immortal coming, even though he had undoubtedly been warned that Amanda was on her way. What he had felt was not just the thief he thought he knew so well. He saw two men enter behind her, one tall, odd cold eyes, lean, moved like a cat. The other was slightly smaller, sharp-planed but handsome face, built like a dancer.

"Well, Amanda, you always manage to surprise me," he said, his face full of suspicion and quickly disguised fear. "Who are your . . . friends?"

"Leonardo Falice, I would like for you to meet Conrad Martin and Brian Laird," Amanda extemporized, introducing the men behind her. "Nardo is in charge of all this," she said, waiving importantly toward the full warehouse.

The four Immortals stood uncomfortably for a moment until Nardo waived the guard outside and Sean closed the door behind him.

"Well, have a seat gentlemen. It's not everyday I get to have three Immortals in my humble establishment," Nardo gestured expansively to the two battered chairs scattered in front of his desk. Connor and Amanda sat and Sean leaned elegantly against the wall, arms folded across his chest.

Falice leaned back in his chair with studied carefree air. He was a thin man, nervous in his movements, thinning dark hair combed carefully over a broad forehead. "I guess if the Game hadn't pretty much stopped, I'd have reason to be pretty nervous right now," he said with a small, jerky laugh.

"I guess you would," Connor agreed softly.

"Well, what can I do for you gentlemen?"

Before Connor could step in, Amanda leaned forward. "Oh, I think the question is what they can do for you, Nardo," she purred. Conrad and, uh, Brian can go places the rest of your guys can't. Take risks none of them would dare. Working together, we wouldn't just control Paris, you could eventually control most of France."

"We?"

Amanda rose and crossed behind the desk, leaning on it near enough to Nardo to put her hand on the inside of his thigh. "You know you've always wanted me to be more than just one of your . . . finders. With their strength and your contacts, we could make a hell of a team."

Nardo's face flushed darker as blood rushed to suddenly warm places all over his body. But Nardo was not a fool, and he took a deep breath to control his physical reaction, and studied the new Immortals instead of doing what he really wanted to do at that moment, which was to stick his tongue clear down the beautiful thief's tantalizing throat.

"Who are you guys, anyway," he asked. "Where are you from?"

After a moment of silence, Connor said quietly in his odd voice that had an unrecognizable accent. "I'm from many places, Falice. Where would you like me to be from?"

"What have you done that would be of interest or use to me?" the man asked arrogantly.

Connor chuckled, a cold sound that sent a chill down Falice's spine. "The question to ask is what I haven't done. He leaned forward. "I've been a pirate on the high seas, boy. I've been a businessman. I was even a lawyer once. Is there any better qualification to be a thief?"

After a moment of wondering who this guy really was and deciding he didn't want to know, Nardo turned to the other man, who looked physically about the same age, but whose eyes were not nearly so wary and cold. Nardo suspected he was considerably younger than his companion. "And what about you? Brian is it?"

Sean smiled. "Oh, I don't have nearly the thieving experience of my friends here," he answered. "But I'm a fast learner when necessity dictates."

When necessity dictates, echoed in Nardo's mind. The words of an educated man. He'd have to watch this one closely. Nardo had an instinctive hatred for people he suspected believed themselves better than him just because they had educational advantages. That was the new class war in this day and age. Who had attended college, who hadn't. Most hadn't, including Leonardo Falice. He'd been turned away. Didn't have the family connections. Didn't have the money. No, he'd have to watch this one closely.

His eyes were drawn again to Amanda's small hand, now lightly stroking his thigh. He forced his thoughts onto business. "I take it you guys are running from something? You need a little cover, a little protection?"

Connor laughed. "I've been protecting myself for a very long time, Nardo," he said, using the name in disdain. "No, we need some funds, a base of operations. We got out of Rome just ahead of Bar Abbas, who managed to capture our contraband but not us. Now we start over. Either we can work with you and we'll all get rich, or we'll work against you and you'll go down. Which would you like it to be?" His words brought a look of warning and irritation from Amanda, but Connor suspected that this Nardo admired a certain amount of brute strength and bravado.

"Bar Abbas," Nardo mused, now running his hand possessively along Amanda's arm. "Now there's a real piece of work. Is he as ugly as they say? I've heard he's thousands of years old."

"Ugly he is," Connor said. "As for his age, I couldn't say. I wasn't inclined to stop and ask for his resume."

Nardo laughed, showing big, white teeth. "I like you, Conrad Martin, or whatever your name is! All right, you two can work for me for awhile and we'll see how it goes. I have a big job you might be perfect for. One of those missions that might have been permanent suicide for my own guys, and I can't afford to lose them. Just a word of precaution, though. I have personal bodyguards scattered throughout this building. You try to make a move against me and you'll be shot down before you can draw your sword. And then," he leaned forward with a leer, "I'll take your head with great pleasure. We don't get to do that much these days, you know. I was born just before the Gathering and only had my first death after all the killing almost stopped. Taking heads is something of an oddity, but hell, it would be a real kick, don't ya think?" With that he laughed again and stood, going to the door.

"Hey, Marcel!" he shouted. The guard who had followed them appeared almost instantly "Show these gentlemen the layout of the place. This is Conrad and . . . Brian, right?" Sean nodded. Show them the layout, then put them in the conference room and call the troops together for a meeting in an hour. He looked speculatively at his two new recruits, the moved close to Amanda, grabbing her arm painfully as he whispered in her ear. "We'll learn right away whether your two friends are any good, and whether they can be trusted, Amanda. If they even move funny, they and you all go down, capice?"

Amanda's huge dark eyes filled his vision. "Oh, Nardo, I wouldn't dare betray you, you know that. You'd kill me in a heartbeat," she whispered fearfully. Nardo looked at her with a satisfied smile. His eyes followed her sensuous movements as she undulated out the door.

The "Conference Room" turned out to be a cleared space in the warehouse where spare packing boxes had been set up as a table. A ratty map of the city and its surrounding countryside pinned to its surface, and only one chair was provided and that was inevitably occupied by Nardo. The group that gathered was of seven men and two women, plus Amanda, Connor and Sean, and finally Nardo, who arrived well after everyone else had been standing around eyeing each other with distrust for awhile.

"Well, boys and girls," Nardo said, coming in and sitting with a flourish. "Has everyone met our two new additions, Conrad and Brian?" The group was sullenly silent. "It may interest you to know that they have a few special talents that will make them especially valuable to our little band of adventurers. We've talked endlessly about the E.D. munitions dump just outside of town. Made plan after plan after plan." Nardo reached for one of the many rolled up tubes of paper stuck into a nearby crate, spreading it out on the table. It was a drawing of a building layout. He pointed to the narrow entrance to a large complex. "It's not really heavily guarded, with most of its security systems entirely automated. If we could just get in the door and deactivate the security, the rest would be easy. But we've never found the key to the way in without killing ourselves in the process. Our new friends are going to help us with just that."

"But it's still a suicide mission, Nardo," one of the women, slight, short, with hard blue eyes said.

"I don't think that will bother them," Nardo said with a gleam in his eye. The meaning of his statement sunk in and the group moved back, away from the two Immortals. They knew Nardo was one and held him in almost god-like awe. They didn't know about Amanda. Two more of the bizarre race of people so rare in the world was more than any person ever expected to encounter in a lifetime.

As Nardo explained how the two Immortals would literally blast their way through in full body armor, taking whatever hits they had to do get to the control room, Connor whispered carefully to Sean. "This is great! It will be the perfect diversion for the Eastern Dawn. In the midst of all the chaos we can use the trackers and the local E.D. will never pick it up. They'll be too busy with this group of clowns."

"We'll do it just before dawn," Nardo announced. "Tonight." The group erupted in argument and protest. "I said tonight!" he shouted over the noise. "That way there's no chance for betrayal. No chance to back out." He looked hard at Connor and Sean, moving close. "We'll see just how good you guys are, won't we?"

Connor grabbed his arm, feeling a hard bicep underneath the silk suit. "And why didn't you take this risk, Nardo?" he asked with a growl.

Nardo pulled his arm away, moving his shoulder with discomfort. "Because I don't like dying, Conrad," he said. "It's happened a couple of times and it's distinctly uncomfortable, and besides you're left vulnerable to anybody who wants to take a head. But with two of you, one can watch the other's back and it doubles the probability that you'll get through. Don't let me down, boys," he said as he turned his back and walked away. "The price would be one you wouldn't want to pay."

Nardo, as it turned out, was actually a pretty good strategist. Connor was to move up to the sensor perimeter of the complex then, under cover fire, make a pattered dash to the entrance, avoiding automatically targeted lasers where possible, taking hits when necessary, reaching close enough to throw especially crafted concussion grenades against a shielded entrance. Undoubtedly, he would be killed in the process, but it was designed to disarm the laser targeting device, making it possible for the second Immortal to survive all the way into the second layer of defenses long enough to plant and detonate a bomb that would blow the main entrance wide open. In all likelihood, that person would also get killed, but then the rest of the team could pour in, quickly taking out the few live guards. They would have approximately 15 minutes before they expected other Eastern Dawn forces to arrive, so they would have to move quickly, loading only two trucks with the lighter weapons, and fleeing back towards town by a predetermined escape route lined periodically with other members of the team who would do what they could to deter their pursuers.

For the most part, the plan actually worked. Connor took a couple of nasty laser burns going in, but his reaction times were faster than the lasers had been calibrated to expect, so he made it all the way to the entrance before one caught him full in the chest. He just had time to arm and toss the concussion grenade before he collapsed. It was just as well, since the force of the concussion grenade would have been a more painful death anyway.

Sean headed in amid sirens and gunfire and explosions, but the lasers were completely off-line. One sharpshooter caught him in the thigh, though, and the shot slowed him down considerably. For this explosion to be effective it had to be planted directly against the hinges of the twelve foot steel doors that guarded the entrance. Nardo's team laid down cover fire as Sean worked, and he quickly molded the gray sticky stuff with the embedded trigger device on each hinge. He turned to move away and felt himself thrown forward into the gravel just before a volcano seemed to explode in his back. He had no breath. It wouldn't come, and he dragged himself away from the doors on his elbows, toward Connor. He reached his kinsman just as the man groaned and he felt his presence surge against his mind. He reached out and grabbed the man's arm, pulling them towards each other with a last gasp of strength.

"Connor!" he gasped, not knowing if the man could hear him. "Detonator in my pocket," was all he managed to get out before the pain overwhelmed his senses and they all just quit on him.

Connor felt his breath gurgle with the blood in his throat, barely aware of the sound of the shots zinging overhead. He felt a grip on his arm and managed to move his head to see . . . Methos? No. Duncan? No, it was Sean. He was saying something. Something about a detonator. Memory flooded back along with the pain, and he quickly rolled over towards his kinsman's son, groping in the pockets, finding the small device, and methodically pressing it's small red button. A green light briefly went off on the instrument, then he and Sean were pushed to the ground by the force of a massive explosion, with metal pieces of shrapnel whizzing past like lethal bees. He pulled Sean's body into him, shielding the younger man as he felt his clothes and skin flayed by the explosion's destructive force.

Connor knew he had passed out briefly when he heard Amanda's voice nearby. "Con...rad's alive, Nardo. Give 'm a minute and they'll both be okay."

"That was fast," came Nardo's voice. "How old is he, anyway?"

"Don't you have something else to worry about?" Amanda snapped, helping Connor as he sat up.

The team was already inside, clearing out any remaining guards while others pulled up two big trucks to the entrance.

Sean had revived and the three Immortals huddled together for a minute under the guise of Sean and Connor's recovery time.

"Amanda," Connor instructed, "You know how to use the tracker I gave you. Head back to the enclave now as fast as you can and activate it. The longer we can have them on the better, but the Eastern Dawn force has to be completely preoccupied with this mess so they're not paying attention to random satellite transmissions."

Sean put his hand on his arm. "Connor, there's something else we need to consider. I didn't really expect this business to work, to be anymore than a diversionary tactic" he said, nodding towards the quickly filling trucks. "But that's a hell of a lot of arms. Our people could really use them! We've got to find a way to . . . redistribute them."

Connor gave the younger man a disgusted look. "Right. Then we'll be running from Nardo who is hiding from the Eastern Dawn who is after us as well. Simple. No problem." The look Sean gave him was classic Duncan MacLeod stubborn. "Oh, all right. We'll think of something. But first we've got to hook back up with Mac and Kir. Now, Amanda, go!"

Amanda slipped away like a ghost and Connor helped Sean to his feet. They both looked like walking corpses, their clothes again tattered, torn and soaked with blood. Their companions stopped briefly to look at them in dumbfounded shock, but at Nardo's shout they returned to their work, quickly closing and locking the two trucks and sending them on their way. The whole operation had taken just over 15 minutes.

The two trucks took different, circuitous routes back to the enclave, and Connor and Sean piled into one of two vans carrying the rest of the team. They were all breathing heavily with exertion and adrenaline. Except for Connor and Sean's temporary injuries only one of the team had been hit. He had taken a bad wound in his leg and groaned in the corner as he was tended to by Claude, Nardo's personal guard. The rest were shouting and giving each other exultant high five's. Nardo looked around the group from the passenger seat up front.

"Where's Amanda?" he asked.

"She went with the other van," Connor announced coolly. After a suspicious silence, Nardo shouted over the noise.

"All right, listen up! It's not over yet. The trucks have to make it safely to . . . where they need to go, and we have to get back to the enclave undetected. So I suggest you quiet down and settle in. It's going to be a long ride home."

And it was. The overloaded van with its wounded, groaning passenger, wound its way through the dark countryside, over back roads, driving completely around Paris, taking over an hour to make it back to Nardo's warehouses. They slipped out of the van like ghosts in the pre-dawn light.

As the team spilled tiredly into the warehouse Sean and Connor shared a worried glance as they didn't immediately feel Amanda's presence. A guard came up and whispered in Nardo's ear, handing him something. After a brief conversation, the man turned to the two Immortals, his face a mask of closed, hard anger.

"Well, well, well," he said softly, keeping his distance. "It seems our new friends have another agenda going on."

Connor and Sean looked up as Amanda, gagged and with her hands tied behind her, was escorted roughly down the stairs to the floor of the warehouse.

Nardo held up the tracking device in his palm. "And what is this, pray tell? And why did Amanda come back here while we were all busy at the munitions dump to try to use it? Hmmm?" He paced back and forth in front of the two other Immortals.

Sean smiled and moved forward. "Look, Nardo, this had nothing to do with you or the your operation." The guard brought Amanda up to Nardo, who grabbed her hard by the elbows, jerking her around so she was facing her two friends. Sean started to move in, but a long, sharp blade was suddenly in Nardo's hand, pricking Amanda's throat.

"Okay, okay," Sean said softly as he felt Connor tense behind him. "Let Amanda go and we'll talk about this rationally."

"Rationally? You love to use those big words don't you, schoolboy?" Nardo sneered, pushing the blade into Amanda's throat until a trickle of blood slowly moved down and soaked into the black jumpsuit she had worn to work in the dark.

Sean felt the guards around him tense, hands on their guns. "This is Immortal business, Nardo," he said softly. "Between us only. Not for the eyes of strangers."

"Ah, you must be from the old school, then aren't you," Nardo replied curtly. "These boys have never seen one of our light displays, have you?" he shouted to the crowd, moving his head slightly. Sean, with the intensive training of almost three lifetimes, moved in like a snake, snatching the knife out of his hand at the same time Amanda ducked and swirled, kicking out to take Nardo off his feet. Connor had turned and in two quick moves, taken the automatic rifle from one guard and knocked two more to the floor, lowering the weapon threateningly to the rest.

"Hold it right there." Connor's voice carried a power that could freeze blood. The small crowd froze in a tense tableau. He reached underneath his coat with his free hand and tossed his sword to Sean. "Take care of this, Sean. The rest of you can either watch or get the hell out of here. Personally, I suggest leaving."

"You can't take all of us!" Carlo, the burly guard who originally greeted them at the door, shouted.

"You think not?" Sean asked, slicing through Amanda's bonds. "Please allow me to introduce myself," his voice lowered to a sinister pitch Amanda had never heard before. "My name is Sean MacLeod. Over there is my kinsman, Connor MacLeod. On his way here shortly is my father. You may have heard of him, too. His name is Duncan MacLeod."

The group stirred, looking at one another, backing off unison like a cowed animal.

"Now Nardo, here, may or may not be your leader in a few minutes, depending on how reasonable he wants to be. He may not play by the rules, but that's how I was taught, and that's how we're going to play. And the rules say no interference, from anyone. Is that perfectly clear?" Sean moved toward the group, meeting each pair of frightened eyes shining in the shadows. "Okay, then."

Nardo had risen to his feet, brushing himself off, attempting to quell his fear and restore his dignity and authority in front of his own people. "Don't believe him," Nardo snarled. "Immortals don't have children. He's no more Duncan MacLeod's son than I am. And as for him! Connor MacLeod is just a legend. So is Duncan MacLeod for that matter! They're just trying to scare you, you assholes. Don't you dare back away!"

"Nardo, all we're interested in is a safe haven 'til our team picks us up. If you'll let us use the trackers now while the Eastern Dawn is still looking primarily for their lost weapons, they won't even notice. Within hours our people will be here and we'll be out of your hair forever."

"Like hell!" Nardo growled. "You may be working for the Eastern Dawn for all I know, leading them straight here. You can't really expect me to believe that business about you being MacLeod's son do you? That's the lamest story I ever heard. You're probably just some traitor Immortals hired by the E.D. to track us all down!" He drew himself up with greater defiance and courage than Sean would have given him credit for. Just give me my sword, schoolboy, and we'll see just what kind of Immortal you really are."

Sean formally handed over the blade, holding his own and down to his side, trying to appear non-threatening. "Look, man, I don't want to fight you. That kind of mindless violence should be over between us. But we have to contact our people."

"Mindless violence," Nardo sighed. "You do love those pretty words, don't you schoolboy? I bet you've had lots of education, haven't you? I bet you think the rest of us are just dirt. Well, there are many ways to skin a cat, boy. I bet all that study was a real pain, especially when you know I can get it so easily with this!"

He swung, but Sean danced easily out of the way, still looking for a way to talk Nardo out of this. Cold sweat broke out all over his body at the prospect of an actual Immortal battle. His father wasn't there to step in, and Connor wouldn't dream of doing so. This was his fight. His alone.

Then Nardo was coming at him with unexpected skill and strength. He had clearly trained hard. He was fast, clever, quickly finding an opening and slicing through cloth and flesh at his left shoulder. The pain helped banish doubt, helped focus as Sean remembered decade after decade of training with the best swordsman and hardest taskmaster in the world. He fought back, quickly slicing through the man's defenses with a stab wound to the thigh.

Nardo danced back, limping slightly, but grinning with excitement. "I bet you didn't expect this, did you, schoolboy? I may have been born too late to be part of the Game, but I was always certain that I would have been a contender, just like the MacLeods!" He lunged in again, but Sean spun, lashing out with a kick that sent the other man stumbling away, barely recovering in time to deflect Sean's next slash towards his chest.

"I know the MacLeods, Leonardo Falice," Sean growled. "And you're no MacLeod." As Falice thrust towards him again, he moved in, taking a deep slash to his side, grabbing the wrist and twisting it, loosening the grip on the sword. In a move practiced so many times it seemed to happen without conscious thought he pulled back and swung high, meeting flesh, then bone, then more flesh.

He had seen it happen before. Had seen his father take heads, had heard the sickening sounds, had watched as the power surged, had even felt its residual effect tingle on his skin. But nothing in over 150 years of living prepared him for this.

And it should have, his mind protested as the first touch of Falice's presence washed through him. No, washed was too gentle a word for the sudden invasion of his psyche and senses. Instinct prompted him to reject the intrusion, to fight off what felt as much like greasy tendrils of slime as anything else. His interpretation of the overall feel of Falice's wasted life, but it was a far more intimate invasion than he expected.

Than he wanted. Than he could bear. Revulsion turned to fear and then to terror as he felt himself being overwhelmed by that presence. His flesh was tingling, over-sensitized, currents of air nearly a complete agony but not exactly. He couldn't do this -- his father had been right and he turned to Connor, wanting his kinsman to take this from him and saw the answer in the sorrowed eyes before he could utter the question.

"Nooooo!" He voiced that protest just before the world crashed in on him. Just before he had neither breath nor thought nor will to cast out or deny what he had stolen in the taking of that single life. The mental agony overwhelmed him, calling him to darkness and he went willingly only to have physical pain drag him back. Fire ran down his spine and out his limbs, coiled in his belly and chest. He was only vaguely aware that he had closed his hands around the blade of his sword, that his palms and fingers were bleeding.

Falice invaded his thoughts, his memories, tore out his own and replaced them and he gagged at the exchange, at what this man had been, had become. No conscience. Only lust and greed and anger and...as a sob tore at his throat...and longing. He had wanted so much as a child, seen too much, endured too much. Young enough to know the world had once been different, had been kinder. So much potential lost. How much? How many more lives and hopes had been destroyed in this mindless conflict? Grief washed through him, gentler than the pain but more terrible in a way because it lingered, came with not enough force to distract him. Settled and became part of him before the other flared up, the physical. There was cold concrete under his face, the sheer power of that life had driven him down to his knees, then further, and now battered at him until he could no longer refuse or deny it.

Oh, God! his mind recoiled as his defenses finally crumbled and the rest of it slammed into him, power coursing through every muscle and nerve following the only known paths of such a channeling and Sean knew now why a Quickening could become addictive. No lover had ever brought him to hardness so quickly, so completely, the pulsing force of it the most thrilling, ecstatic feeling he'd ever known. Had he been able to move he would ripped his own clothing off to reach that need, to ease it, to release that coiling monster in his groin, in his belly.

And then it was bleeding off, becoming almost manageable until Sean realized where it was bleeding off to and why and a thousand old nightmares reared up to laugh at him. He could feel his father, the shock, the grief nearly as deep as his own, the reaction to this horror/rapture he had tried so desperately to shield Sean from, and then the other. Methos, pulling at the worst of it, draining it off without conscious will or thought, almost as much a release valve for Sean's physical and emotional reaction to a Quickening as he had been for Duncan for all these years.

The older immortal had been unable to do anything about it, to quell it or release it either by himself or in the arms of another human. The torment of it was too much and Sean pulled it back, screaming against the sudden burning need again. He cut off those invisible links, shut down on the bonds but found he could not. He had neither his father's will nor Methos' strength to deny them. The sobs built in his chest again both in anger and in need. But his skin was no longer afire, his thoughts no longer so chaotic as, with his father and brother's help, Falice settled deep within him and his own psyche reemerged. Latent energy still lanced through his body at intervals but he could move, though his limbs felt heavy, his body too aware, every sound, every touch of air, of clothing, a new and painfully sensuous experience.

And Falice had never taken a head. What would taking the head of someone more powerful be like? What more could be drawn from such a source, as the lusts in his body changed to lusts in his mind. Reason gave way to reality -- his father had denied him all this, had denied him this, the overwhelming, erotic sense of power. The pain was gone, the memory a bare ripple across his thoughts. Duncan MacLeod took heads unwillingly, reluctantly, when all this could be gained?

He raised his head and caught Connor watching him anxiously. Why should Connor worry? His kinsman's words came whispering back - his father's, his brother's. This could be an addiction. He could want this, crave it like any other sensation that took him out of himself, that made him both less and more than he was.

"No," a softer protest as he sought for strength and found it in those immutable links, his throat throbbing as if the scar there were the point of contact. Hands closed over his shoulders, small hands, delicate but strong and he looked up in surprise to find Amanda watching him, dark eyes wide and bright, a faint smile in her eyes as she pulled him upward.

Connor's hand was on his other elbow. "Come on, Sean. Let's get out of here, to where we can deal with the rest of this," he coaxed and Sean had not the strength left to argue. His body still ached and burned with unmet need, Amanda's proximity a torment and a comfort. His cousin's strong presence restraining the urges that still came at him, through him. He could stand this. He could...endure this as his father did.

This time.

It crept over MacLeod slowly, the dread and the fear and the...pain. That came at him so suddenly it jarred him from sleep, from his confusion. "Oh, no. No," it was both murmur and whimper and Kir stirred as he gripped her waist convulsively before shoving himself away, rolling to his feet.

"Duncan?" she muttered and twisted to see him go to his knee in the shadows. He held his hand up to ward her off and she stopped, suddenly recognizing the signs, the posture the breathing. Only MacLeod was barely holding on to the ragged edge of control. Someone in the Community had taken a head. Not been taken, the signs were vastly different. But...a convulsive sob was wrenched from Duncan's chest and Kir had the answer she needed.

Sean.

She was unprepared for the moan that accompanied MacLeod's realization of the Quickening that was even now ripping through his son's soul and body. Until she realized it wasn't Mac's voice, not his grief. He heard it as well, body tense and rigid. He stumbled to his feet but Kir preceded him and found Revas still standing guard at the door. It was louder now--that sound. Ghosts couldn't make such horrible sounds.

Kir reached for the door only to find a broader hand covering hers. MacLeod's other hand pulled gently at her shoulder, displacing her.

"Mac, let me," she murmured. He shook his head, face unreadable and opened the door. Without a word, Revas handed him the lantern and then turned away, looking oddly as if he were going to be ill. Kir could do nothing. She hesitated, wanting to remain on hand but this required privacy -- more privacy than she could actually offer but at least the illusion could be produced. She backed away, following Revas to the small stove where she could smell coffee. Dawn had come all too early this night.

He had heard that keening sound before, once. Once when Methos had felt so lost he might never have found his way back. But he was barely conscious this time, for all that his weakened body thrashed and convulsed on the cot. The lantern revealed a face mute and terrible in its agony as well as the other emotions a Quickening brought to a recipient.

Or to the two men whose ties to this particular recipient were so tightly tangled they might never sort them. Sean had taken a head. It was like a pronouncement of judgment. That Sean had done so to defend his own life as well as others Mac had no doubt. But he had tried so hard to prevent this, would have given anything to be able to keep this particular experience from tainting his son's life.

A word, a mental nudge and his hands reached out. Methos went still and silent in that exact moment, waking and acknowledging what was happening with only a convulsive gasp, recognizing the familiar hands on his shoulders.

Mac, from long habit and natural instinct, reached out to knead his friend's bony shoulders. The contact calmed him, grounding him, helping to quell the burning agony that traced through his brain and along his skin.

This had been the hardest of many recent tests to keep from retreating back behind that wall of power that resided in his mind. That combined thread of the residual Quickenings of every member of the Community had once been so overwhelming that whatever he was, his feelings, his life, had smothered under its weight. For one, long terrible year he had become an automaton, a warrior in service to the Community with no life, no emotions that could be called his own. But Methos had finally stepped in, took some of that power into himself, magnifying their already intense connection even more, but also leading the Scotsman back from a black abyss of perpetual nothingness. That gift, plus the unmitigated joy of Sean's birth, had kept him in the here and now. And as painful as it frequently was, it was where he wanted to be.

Mac eased his massage of the broad shoulders. He was so tired. The Quickening, its erotic energy, what that death, that killing, meant to his son's life made him ache in body and soul. He desperately needed Methos to respond, to speak to him, to forgive him for whatever transgression he had unknowingly committed. The tension between them was well nigh unbearable.

Then he felt a smooth hand on his face as the shoulders he was massaging turned and Mac swallowed with sudden relief. Perhaps whatever anger Methos had been holding he had finally released. He opened his eyes to find the oldest Immortal's hazel irises inches away from his own, glittering with something Mac didn't initially recognize until the mouth closed over his, pressing him back until he was against the wall, hot tongue seeking entry.

A numbing blast of a thousand thoughts, images, sensations and emotions seemed to fly through Duncan's already overloaded brain all at once. All conflicting, all confusing. Even though some part of him knew it was the absolutely wrong thing to do, he pulled away, gasping for both air and space to think.

"No, Highlander!" Methos growled in a low voice, grasping the heavier man's shirt tightly in his fists with a strength that belied his unnatural thinness. "Not an option. You owe me this!" The words were a hiss, filled with venom. Methos pressed up against him, his erection pressing hard into MacLeod's thigh.

"Oh, Christ, Methos!" was all Duncan could think to say. "After all these years, why right now?!"

"Because I'm tired of waiting for you to grow up, Duncan MacLeod. I'm tired of living my life for your convenience, in your shadow. I'm the oldest of our kind, for God's sake! Why should I be following you around, wondering if, some day, you would wake up to the fact that you belong to me? No, Duncan. No more. I take what I want." Methos' normally carefully neutral, patrician features were distorted with hatred and lust.

Duncan angrily shoved Methos away. "I belong to no one!" he growled. "Since when do ye think ye own me?"

"I've always owned you, MacLeod, since the day you walked into my apartment almost 200 years ago. I've saved your ass and your soul more times than I can count, all the while watching you play God's gift to the world. I put up with it for a long, long time, figuring that some day the time would be right, that you would realize there was more than a psychic connection between us." The old Immortal smiled bitterly, but his expression gradually evolved into something far more ugly as he reached out to run his fingers lightly across MacLeod's cheek and down the suddenly sweat-slicked neck. "But you lost the right to any more consideration when you abandoned me, let me rot in hell for three years, keeping me tied to your apron strings just enough to be certain I knew just how horrible my situation was, that I was totally dependent on you to save me!" Methos was shaking under the force of his own words, and when Mac flinched away from his touch and his accusation, his knees seemed to no longer hold him and he sank gasping into a chair.

"Is that what you thought?" Mac asked, stunned into immobility by Methos' words.

"That is what it was, wasn't it, Mac?" he spat the name out like an epithet. "Another little power trip for Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod?" His rage brought him to his feet again as he stalked closer and closer. "You could have stopped it, you son-of-a-bitch!" the voice rose to near hysteria. "You could severed the connection, used Sean, used Connor, used anybody to carry the overflow connection instead of me. But NO! You had to be the hero, letting me awaken over and over and over again to a version of Hades even I had never imagined was possible." Once again only inches away, Methos reached out his hand to hold Duncan's jaw, thin alabaster fingers digging deep into dark flesh. "Well it's time to pay the piper, my lovely clan chieftain." The voice dropped to a malevolent whisper. The other hand reached out to touch, to stroke the flesh at Duncan's groin, already hard from the residual effect of Sean's Quickening.

"No, Methos," Duncan said, his voice choked with emotion as his big hand closed around Methos' thin wrist. "Not now. Not like this. Not in anger. Please," he begged. He moved Methos' hand away and clasped him at the back of the neck, his dark eyes widely dilated. He took a deep breath, trying to organize his nearly incoherent, stress-out brain. "You think I wanted to keep us tethered together, to feel your pain over and over again? You think that was some kind of power trip?" He laughed sadly, shaking his head. "My God, Methos, what kind of a monster do you think I am?"

"Not a monster, MacLeod, a fool! A blind, selfish fool who wouldn't know love if it came and slapped him in the face," Methos said. Green and gold eyes met dark brown ones and the brown ones finally turned away as Mac broke contact, turning his back.

"I knew, Methos," the voice almost a whisper. "I've known almost since the beginning. Remember this?" he slipped the ivory handled hunting knife he had carried for centuries out of his belt, driving it's point deep into the battered table with a startling thud as his own anger began to build. "You really think I didn't know what that business was all about when you got pissed off and used that on me? Dammit, Methos give me a little credit! Haven't I earned even a little credit after all these years?"

Methos body was rigid, his words and his movement jerky as though only marginally under his control. "If you knew," he demanded, "why didn't you do anything about it? At least talk about it!"

Mac slowly sank into a chair. It was a question he had been asking himself for a long, long time. "Because it doesn't come naturally to me," he whispered. "Because I didn't know how. Because I've rarely had any male lover, much less an Immortal one. But mostly because we are already tied to each other in so many ways that taking it to a new level scares the shit out of me. You and Sean are the most important people in the world to me, Methos. To lose you because we . . . because I . . . couldn't deal with the intensity of a sexual relationship is just more painful than I can even think about." Mac shook his head slowly. "I've lost too many lovers. Being your friend seemed so much safer, for both of us."

Methos took a few steps to stand in front of MacLeod, a small triumphant smile on his face. "You just said it yourself, Highlander. You couldn't stand to lose me. So you left me in agony for three...fucking...years!" Methos leaned closer, almost whispering in his ear. "Three years with no air, with my body broken and crushed, trapped under rock and damp with the rats, the insects, the heat and the cold, no food, no water. If you cared about me even a little you would have let me die, not kept bringing me back every damn time you took a Quickening or every time you died and came back. Over and over again you dragged me back to life, into that hell just so I could die all over again. No, Duncan," Methos spat bitterly, standing over him like an admonishing parent. "You only care about yourself. You use Sean, you use me, you use everyone just to gratify your own ego, your insatiable need to be in control, in charge," he concluded harshly. "The real mystery is why I ever cared about you at all. Just another pretty face, I guess." The words were intended to hurt. They fell out of his mouth like nails driven into a coffin. Methos trembled even as he said them, wanting to take them back somehow, but unwilling, unable to do so.

Duncan's face was ashen as he stood and moved away, then turned back, carefully pulling the knife out of the table and slipping it back into his belt. When he looked up to meet Methos' eyes, the old Immortal's heart, already hammering hard in his chest, skipped several beats. He had seen that expression before. The dark eyes were disturbingly empty, the face completely relaxed and calm.

"All right, Methos. If that's how you feel I'll find a way to break the connection, I promise." He turned and left the room.

Kir watched, then followed, as Mac slipped out of Methos' room and into their own. She was bothered by the man's body language. It was too smooth, too relaxed so soon after the horror of Sean taking a Quickening.

He was stripping out of his fatigues and changing into plain jeans and a sweater. She watched for a minute, waiting for him to come to her. The residual effect of the Quickening should have driven him into her arms in fairly short order, but this one had such an emotional backwash she couldn't be sure. But if his body was any indicator, the usual erotic afterburn was oddly absent, as was any emotional distress.

"Mac?" He looked up from his task and Kir took in a sudden gulp of air. "Oh, Gods, Mac don't do this!" she whispered, immediately going to him, holding his shoulders and locking her eyes with his closed, blank, dark ones.

He pulled away, reaching for a travel bag and filling it. "I think it's safe to assume that Connor and Sean would have figured out that we were betrayed and won't head directly to England. If they want to reconnect with us and find a safe spot to use the Pell trackers, they'll need a contact they can trust. In this part of the world, right now, there's really only one person Sean would turn to."

"Mac, stop this! Talk to me!"

"It will take another couple of days at least to get the skimmer repaired. It makes more sense for me to head to Paris to find them. Then even if they can't use the trackers, I can lead them back to you." He finally looked up again. "Besides, I think everyone would be better off if I left. I'll work most effectively alone." He closed the now-full bag, slinging it over his shoulder and heading toward the door.

"You're not alone, Mac, even if you want to be! You carry all of us with you. Methos included." Her words seemed to make him wince and he pulled in a breath as though it was a guard against some evil, closed his eyes and turned his head away. "What happened? Mac, I can't help you if you don't tell me!" Kir insisted.

He paused in the doorway, half in and half out. "I don't know what happened between you two, but you can't run away like this. It will rip apart the team, separate us when we cannot afford to be," she said evenly. "Do you want us to be further distracted by worrying about and looking for you?" He was still as a stone.

"You started us on this mission, Duncan," Kir whispered. "You have an obligation to see it through, no matter the personal pain it might cause." She paused, then gently pulled the bag out of his arms, set it on the floor and put both her hands on his face where she could feel his jaw clench and loosen, clench and loosen.

"Now, my love," she whispered, "Tell me."

He swallowed and took another deep breath. "Oh, Kir," he said, his voice barely above an inaudible breath of air, "I've caused him more pain than I ever dreamed possible." He pulled away from her, staring blindly out the door for a long moment before covering his face with his hands and drawing a deep breath.

"I knew he was aware but it was worse than that. There were times when I brought him out of out of his own death with mine. He was alive and conscious for much more time than I knew. Our link...it's his strength I drew on, Kir. He grounded me, fed me comfort out of anything useful....his own pain and I didn't return it, not in the way he wanted or needed."

Kir kept silent, the implication making her skin crawl and her stomach twist into tight little knots.

"And the one thing that might make it even, to settle this between us, I couldn't...didn't give him."

Kir chose her words carefully, recognizing the edge of near panic in the older man's voice. After years of desperate searching, only to find that he had been the cause of his friend's pain. "Mac, whatever you did was neither cruel nor intended. You did not wish this on him and the Spirits know you have been desperately trying to end his torment almost since it began," she said, sitting on the edge of the rickety table. "He is hurt and frightened. He is lashing out at you, trying to make you hurt as he does."

"I don't think its possible," Mac said harshly. "Three years, Kir! Nearly all of it he has been aware of his own body dying, of it wasting, of being gnawed on by vermin and unable to move or control any of it! I didn't know. I swear I didn't know but...if he could be so aware of me, of the death I dealt -- why could I not feel the living death I was giving him? You know Connor won't go into small dark places - being buried after a death is hard enough. Connor was buried for six years once but until the tunnel was opened he did not know it. Nefertiri was in her coffin for centuries - millennia, but she didn't know. She was dead. But except for a few days or weeks at a time, Methos knew he was buried alive, with just enough air, just enough moisture to keep him alive." Duncan shivered with the horror of that thought.

"You did not cause this, Mac!" Kir snapped. "You must have patience with him but most especially for yourself. You know that! He will forgive you. But not until you forgive yourself."

"You have high expectations of both of us," Mac said sharply. "I should have known. Or maybe I knew but just didn't want to face it! What was keeping him in agony was me, Kir! If I had broken the link it would have ended it, let him rest in oblivion until we could dig him out. But it didn't even occur to me, Kir! Now he wants it broken and I can't say I blame him." He stopped, deliberately slowing his breathing, his face growing calm again. "But you're right, Kir. I have a responsibility to make sure he gets back safely. I'll help Claire on the repairs. Then we'll find Sean and Connor and head back. Once that's done we'll deal with this once and for all." He turned and left, the screen door slamming shut behind him.

"You son of a bitch," she muttered, uncertain whether she was referring to Methos or Duncan. Either or both.

Still cursing silently and earning, once more, her tribal name of Silent Storm, she swept through the base like a portent of doom. She paced back and forth in the darkness, but she couldn't keep her words locked inside. The door to Methos' "room" had no lock, stripped as the base had been of anything useful. Nor did she knock.

I should have, she thought to herself in silent admonition. She was not in caretaker mood at the moment, not as she had been when she and Duncan had cleaned the Ancient before. She was in a mood to root out the basics of Methos' anger, however. Once she could get the bile to settle in her stomach.

Methos was changing, but he felt her, knew her without looking and he did not falter as he stepped in to the clean fatigues that had been left for him. He was not fast enough, or perhaps cared not enough, to do so quickly. Flesh could be an illusion and Methos' was, translucent as paper, stretched thin over bones that were covered by only the minimal of muscle. She could count every rib, could have cast anatomical molds from the pronounced collar bones.

"Don't look so shocked, Kirin. You have seen the dead before," he said harshly, slipping the thin arms into the fabric of the sleeves. Covered, he closed the front then sat, moving with the suppressed dignity she watched in the elders of her tribe.

She sucked in a breath, shoving her impressions down deep to recover her purpose. The hazel eyes regarded her with a glittering hardness. The face, one she had remembered with smiles, laughter and a wry cynicism -- none of that was reflected in the gaunt face turned toward her.

"If you wanted to drive MacLeod away, you did a remarkable job," she commented, closing the door and leaning against it. Ostensibly to keep out unwanted intruders but in truth she needed the support of that door for what she faced.

"Off to be a hero?" Methos sneered. "You would save yourself lives and trouble if you went after him now."

"He was going to leave to find Sean," she said. "And Connor." If she expected any reaction from the mention of his younger brother, she was disappointed. Nothing showed, not even a flicker. "But he's staying out of duty to you, to see you safely back to the States. Or don't you care?"

"Sean is quite capable of taking care of himself, despite MacLeod's fears. He may even be capable enough from keeping Connor from getting either of them killed."

"So, it doesn't matter what happens next or that people risked themselves to find you? Maybe we should have left you in that hole," she said harshly and finally got what she was looking for -- a reaction. It hurt though. No, it ripped at heart and soul to see the expression on the gaunt face. He was one of the walking dead, a haunted revenant of himself. She wondered if they had not inadvertently left Methos' soul in that tiny hole in Rome.

"You are not there any longer, Grandfather," she murmured and came forward, crouching in front of him. He flinched away when she would have reached for his hands and she laid her hands across her knees. "And the memories will fade."

"No, they won't," he whispered. "Not soon. Not soon enough," he said with more strength. "You want an apology, Kir? You won't get it from me. Not for this."

"He could not lose you."

"Yes. He could have. He chose not, too. Life is all about choices. When you have no more, life isn't worth living."

"Should I take your head, then?" she asked seriously. "Or do you have choices now?"

"It depends on who you want to survive more," he said without answering her question. "You want Mac, Kir? You want him to warm your bed at night? To be your hero?" he sneered. "You might best get your sword, because if you don't take my head, I will surely take his just as soon as I can lift one."

Kir recoiled, cold as chilling as that in his voice settling deep within her. This man had been important enough to her, to her people, to risk a great deal. He still was for what he offered, for what he was. But if heaven and hell could ever be joined, she was certain she had found it so in the frail body and angry spirit of this one body.

Without another word, she rose and left him. "Revas," she beckoned and her pilot sauntered over. "You watch this door. You let no one in without my order and if he tries to leave you go with him," she said flatly.

Revas raised his eyebrows at the order but nodded. "None too stable, is he?" he asked with the hint of compassion Kir could not summon.

"He is...as dangerous as he is valuable. Possibly more," she said. "Until the Trans is fixed, he is your only responsibility."

"Ghost, what is it? Is he out of his mind? I would be," Revas added softly.

"If he were insane I would know what to do. He is not. Which makes him dangerous," she said and left him. "Make sure your gun is loaded and off safety," she added over her shoulder and sought some quiet place to ease the sickness from her own soul.

Mac had disappeared into the repair shed, working with new urgency, but unwilling to wake Claire, who was already at or near exhausted collapse. Besides he needed to be by himself. The presence of others grated against his skin. Worrying about the life-altering impact of that wrenching, frightening, erotic first Quickening, something Mac hoped Sean would never experience, would change nothing. The cold sick feeling that threatened to overwhelm him when he thought about Methos and what the man he had long thought of as a brother believed him capable . . . he shuddered at the sense of self-disgust that arose . . . would also change nothing. Kir was right. His only value to any of them right now was to do everything in his power to get Methos safely home, get Sean back to the States in one piece.

He picked up the welder, working gently with the delicate machinery, concentrating . . . then had to stop. His hands were shaking with the physical and emotional tension of more Quickening energy than he could easily control anymore. He turned off the welder, put the tools down and walked out into the dawn air, taking slow measured steps. With every step he meditated, visualizing moving away from everyone, everything, distancing himself from the energy, channeling it carefully, by small increments, into that place in his mind where it fed into the connections he had with all the members of the Community. After an hour of slow walking, deep in meditation, with the sun now well above the horizon, he felt calm once more, his purposes clear.

By the time he returned to the shed someone had left some rations for him, but food was only a distraction. He picked up the welder once more, wielding it with the delicacy of a surgeon.

At some point Claire joined him and the two worked side by side, exchanging few words and comments, four hands almost becoming an extension of a single being as the urgency of the need to get to the rest of their team was felt by everyone. Kir stopped in several times, but was unnoticed by her lover, although Claire shot her a concerned glance. The man's face was grim and cold. He had hardly eaten or slept since Methos had been found and showed no signs of interest in either activity.

But Kir just shook her head and slipped silently away. Maybe once they found Sean, Mac would listen to reason. Right now he might as well be on another planet. And right now the team's Commander felt like she was trying to lead a stampeding herd of wild horses. It would probably be safer just to get out of the way. Unfortunately, for all their sakes, she couldn't afford to play it safe.

~~~~~~

As Amanda helped the shaken, disoriented boy to his feet, and under these circumstances Connor was perfectly comfortable with thinking of Sean as a boy, Connor advanced on the half dozen remaining team members, including Carlo and Marcel. They were all wite faced, and one had evidently passed out in shock.

"It seems Nardo is no longer your leader," Connor said softly. "Does anyone dispute who the new leaders are?"

He let a silence tick by for a few seconds, then nodded approvingly. "All right, then. Carlo, I assume Nardo had private quarters?"

Carlo's head went up and down in jerky fashion, then nodded towards the back.

"Show us." Connor instructed, grabbing Sean's arm as he stumbled and almost collapsed, even as Amanda supported him on the other side.

Nardo's hideaway underneath the stairs was replete with bed, sitting area and bar, with a full communications complex built into the corner. Connor sent Carlo away with instructions that the team be reassembled in three hours. The Immortals needed the time to rest and to plan. But first, Connor thought, there was the problem of Sean.

He oblivious to their surroundings, lost in an internal struggle for sanity and control. Connor's touch on his arm was both comforting and excruciating. How long before this passes? Sean finally managed to question. His father recovered sufficiently to be coherent within minutes, even if the residual effects lingered ever longer. Methos recovered...coherent thought was lost again as he tried to recall the one time he had seen Methos take a head. All his brother had required was solitude and Sean realized he had no idea how long it took the oldest of them to shed the effects.

Then there was a bed beneath him and he curled into it, barely aware when he was covered. He felt exhausted and enervated at the same time and the persistent sizzle of sensation along his nerves was enough to make him want to scream again.

"The first is the hardest, lad," Connor said softly, sitting on the bed beside him. "Try to let it go."

Grand advice if he could take it. If he even knew what letting go meant.

Connor moved away, watching Sean worriedly. His own first Quickening had been a shock and he recalled it being nearly a day before he had shaken the last of it. But Sean seemed to be taking it much harder than he recalled having done. Sean had some of his father's dusky coloring, but now he was rather gray looking, a thin sheen of sweat across his skin. He had curled into a tight little ball, not really trembling, just closing out the world. Or closing himself in. A family trait, that.

Amanda was watching as well, lip caught between her teeth. "We can't stay here long," She murmured. "Nardo's ex-compatriots are bound to come after us eventually. We're not safe and definitely not secure."

"A little time, Amanda," Connor hissed. "He'll come out of it but I need him...we need him concentrating and alert. I don't fancy having to sling him over my shoulder again if we need to make a quick exit. He needs to let go...but he doesn't have the experience to know how," he said more softly, his own helplessness actually plucking at some compassionate nerve in her soul. Connor was well and truly worried about Sean.

"Maybe I can hurry things along a bit," she said softly and moved toward the bed. Connor gripped her arm, blue-gray eyes hard.

"Leave him be, Amanda. He's in no shape to think or react rationally to this."

"I don't need him to think," Amanda said. "And I have a great deal more experience in helping MacLeods through this part of a Quickening than you do -- or are you getting senile in your old age?" she reminded him. "Go keep watch, Connor. Let me do what comes naturally and be exactly what is needed."

Connor swore softly but he certainly did recall. There were certain advantages to having a willing and Immortal female around after a Quickening. If Amanda could market that service she would be a millionaire. He turned away just as she sat on the edge of the cot. Annoyed as he was, part of him admitted she was right. Sean had been ill-prepared for this, damn Duncan's I-know-best overprotective attitude. He was also aware that Amanda did have a good heart under all that opportunistic bullshit. He just wished she didn't seem so damned predatory about it. At the soft moist sounds of a kiss, he shouldered into his coat and went to stand guard and sentinel in the hallway.

"Sean?" She eased onto the bed, warm hands slipping along his shoulder. He stirred, rolling back a bit and having to truly focus on her for a moment. His skin was hot through his clothes, face flushed.

"Amanda? Wha...do we need to move?" he seemed more confused and dazed than anything and Amanda kept her voice soft, forcing him to listen.

"No. Not just yet. We have a little time." Light fingers touched his cheek and she bent, catching his startled mouth with hers. She felt the tension in his body mount, hands gripping the edge of the blanket convulsively.

"Amanda, don't," he whispered pulling back, the hazel eyes wide and uncertain. Hazel, not brown, the curious mixture of two familiar faces having never so imprinted themselves quite so forcibly in her brain before.

"Hush, Sean. You know what this is and why. Surely Duncan didn't keep that back from you as well? Or if he did, Methos certainly would have told you." Her hands moved to his shirt collar, pushing the fabric back, her touch cool on his fevered skin.

"He did...they did but they said it could be controlled. I...I can control this...I just need..."

"Sean MacLeod, what you need I can provide and would like to if you'll let me. Control is something you reserve for those times when there is no alternative available," she said with a teasing smile and pushed him a bit, to put him on his back, hands deftly unzipping the overalls to expose his belly. She leaned into him, just enough pressure against his groin to draw out a gasp. Poor kid, he was hard as the proverbial rock. Painfully hard she guessed when he all but convulsed at her light touch. The reaction of his body distracted him just enough for her to pull the overalls down from his shoulders, leaving his well-defined torso bare and sweating.

"Aman --" She stopped his protest with her mouth, felt his hands come up to her arms to push her away and she touched him - one hand to his exposed belly the other, closing gently over his groin. What had been a protest became a groan as he pressed into her hands. His gasp opened him to a deeper invasion of his mouth and the hands that had started to push her away suddenly, roughly, pulled her closer. That's it, Sean, she thought approvingly as she tugged his clothes further down his hips.

Suddenly it was Sean who was claiming her mouth and she gave into his exploration. His reaction to her was settling quite warmly through her own belly and as his hands found her breasts, she let loose a small moan of her own.

He was so unlike MacLeod or Methos and such a combination of both that it took her a little time to forget either of the other two men but he really was unlike them in many ways. His hands were large, like Duncan's, but more graceful, long fingered, like Methos', and they moved with such delicacy that she had to pause, straddling him as she peeled off her catsuit. The eyes, more gold than green, were glazed as she stripped, but his hands reached to stroke along her smooth skin with a certain wonder. "Your turn, boyo," She murmured feeling unaccountably embarrassed by his longing gaze. Seduction for the cause, she reminded herself but it wasn't true. Sean looked far more vulnerable than Duncan ever had, for all he looked physically older. There was an innocence in his face and she knew where he got it from, other hazel eyes that were more green than gold peering back at her for a brief moment. How Methos had ever managed to retain any portion of that frailty after 5000 years was beyond her.

She shoved the thoughts away again and bent, grabbing at Sean's clothes and pulling them free along with shoes and socks. Oh sweetheart, you were blessed, she thought when he was naked beneath her and she was finally able to concentrate on Sean alone. He was broad at shoulder but he trimmed down nicely through waist and hips. Only the barest trace of dark hair covered his chest but it was thicker below his navel, a line of it running downward and spreading. And he was large and hard and hot and shaken by her brazenness and by the urgency of his need.

"No rest for the wicked," she said with a grin, giving him one long moment to see her on her knees above him before she was dropping. He caught her, held her and pulled her close, hips already lifting to meet her as their mouths merged and he was pressing against her.

She would have taken him right then, recognizing that need for what it was and willing to withstand a little pain to wipe away the shadow of agony in his gold eyes. But instead of entering her mmediately he stilled with a groan, and it was Amanda's turn to gasp as his fingers stroked at her intimately, quickly rewarded by the smallest amount of slick fluid to gentle his strokes, then more. Sean was clearly no novice at pleasuring a woman. Must run in the family she thought happily, pushing gainst his hand and then again as his other hand found her breast, thumb brushing lightly across her nipple, then again as the nub rose.

She dropped her hips and felt him surge against her. His whole body shaking this time. "Come on, Sean," she murmured against his ear before nipping at it. "I promise you sometime we will take this more slowly, but you need this now. I've got you, baby," She murmured and closed her hand around his cock. His cry was lost against her mouth as she felt fluid seep from the flesh, the shaft hot and rigid. She was moist and beginning to throb as well. Close enough.

She guided him and then need and instinct took over. Her gasp was lost in his moan as he pressed into her spasmodically, unable to control the thrust. She tried gentling him but it was too much for his already over-taxed restraint. They almost ended up on the floor as he pulled back then twisted, crying out in frustration and pain, unwilling or unable to find his release.

His reaction almost frightened her. What she had meant as pleasure seemed more torment. She caught his face in her hands, feeling the labored rise and fall of his chest against her breasts. "Sean," she said his name firmly. "Breathe, sweetie. Come on," she coaxed and he did, fingers digging into her hips and buttocks.

On the second breath she moved with him, taking him deep, her own breath catching. His eyes closed as he let her guide him, quelling the near frenzy. She murmured in his ear, moving over him, pulling and releasing until he moved with her, the strong flex of his hips slightly less panicked and more controlled. Rhythm established she quickened the pace, heard his breathing falter again and then something she had not expected.

A sob. It shattered her and she caught him. Kissing him, burying whatever ever pain there was in this jointure under kisses and words and the still present comfort of her body. His arms came around her back and she met his thrust and again, felt the shudder begin as he strained for control, for sanity. One hand crept between them and it was Amanda's turn to fight off her tears as he began stroking again, faltering under his own need. Her orgasm came in tiny sweet increments, gasps lost against Sean's throat and then a surge as, with an inarticulate cry, he was suddenly straining against her, crushing her to him and she felt warmth flood within her and from her, slicking them both. A few last convulsive spasms and Sean seemed to collapse, fingers sliding along her thigh as his breath grew less shallow and then evened. The near-faint lasted only a moment before he opened his eyes, the pain and doubt gone, replaced with a look of intense gratitude that Amanda found uncomfortable.

She folded herself against him and held him, accepting the small, gentle kisses he lay upon throat and shoulder. It was not what she had expected. She had meant only to ease the need in him, to enjoy something just the slightest bit forbidden.

Not for the first time she wondered what it was about the MacLeod men that affected her so strongly. Sean was as unlike his father as Duncan was unlike Connor. But there was no macho posturing in this beautiful boy. No tempered passion. It was all raw and open and deceptively beguiling.

She moved, sighing a bit when he slipped free of her, surprised when he rose with her. He was not smiling but neither was he angry or even embarrassed.

"I...I didn't know how powerful it would be," he murmured and then the pink did creep into his cheeks. "I thought...thank you, Amanda," he said and then pulled her to him, his kiss was sweet and gentle and Amanda found her eyes burning again at the overpoweringly innocent passion in it.

"Friends.." she managed to murmur when she pulled back. "It's what friends are for..."

"I think I had better be cautious of which friends I pick, then," he said with just the faintest hint of a tease. She smiled and touched his lips.

"You do that, boyo. You be very careful." She had to move then, too afraid of getting lost in those shining eyes.

Despite Sean's marginal control, eventually the three Immortals had to deal with the practical difficulties of their situation. Their problems got even more complex after Amanda reported that the reason she had been caught using the tracker was because activating the device had set off clanging alarms throughout the warehouse. So whatever they did, they either had to avoid the sophisticated sensor systems in the warehouse, find another place to use the trackers, or find a way out that didn't involve the trackers at all. Added to the problem was Sean's insistence that they try to get the stolen munitions for the Cherokee Nation, the problem of an unknown traitor in their midst, as well as the hostile remnants of Nardo's team.

It took them some time, but eventually they had a plan. They would have to be lucky, and they would have to be good, Sean realized as he gathered the frayed tendrils of his mental processes to study the communications console Nardo had the foresight to install in his quarters.

By the time Nardo's team assembled in the "conference room" Sean was able to walk in on his own, even if he did require the unobtrusive support of a packing crate behind his back to stay upright. Connor took over the single chair, his long body evidently totally relaxed and unconcerned about the tense suspicion that tainted the air.

The group looked at each other in surprise when it was not Connor, but Amanda, who spoke.

"You all know I've been associated with Nardo a long time. He was a pretty good front man, really, but even though things have changed, it doesn't mean they have to be less profitable. Quite the contrary," Amanda paced around the table, letting the group get comfortable with her. She was a familiar face, a known quantity. "I have my own ideas about how we can make some real money, move this stuff more quickly, take fewer risks. But the first thing we have to do is get rid of those arms we took this morning. As long as E.D. knows we have them, we will be hunted like dogs."

She swung on Nardo's head henchman. "Carlo, I want you take us to the munitions stash. These  
two," she indicated Connor and Sean, "have agreed to pay us market rate for them, and have them out of our hands within twelve hours. That way we won't have to sell them off piecemeal the way Nardo was planning, and E.D. will very quickly find out that coming after us isn't worth their time and trouble."

"Waaait a minute, Amanda," Carlo interjected. "Nardo had several potential buyers lined up for those weapons. He was going to set up a competitive bid for them. We won't get nearly as much money this way!"

"Nardo was a fool!" Amanda spat. "It will take weeks to set up and complete a bidding process, especially with Nardo dead. In the meantime, the E.D. will clean our clocks and hound us into hiding. Up to now they've tolerated us because we haven't gotten in their way, but we have just given them a big, black eye! The only way to try to get them off our back is to get rid of the weapons, then deny that we ever had them." Amanda faced off against Carlo and the rest of the group, all the full millennia of her power radiating authority. "Besides," her smile contained no humor, "these gentlemen would take it very harshly if we reneged on the deal I just made. You want to take them on?"

The room was deathly silent. "Okay. Carlo, Marcel, you come with us. The rest of you stay here and wait for us."

As the three Immortals and two guards moved towards the van, Sean whispered into Connor's ear. "What if the rescue party doesn't show up when we signal?"

"You were the one who insisted on getting the arms," Connor growled. "I guess you'll just have to think of something."

The three Immortals breathed a silent, collective sigh of relief when the van moved away from the warehouse, the other members of Nardo's team standing, watching with hostile eyes. Marcel drove as Carlo kept his eyes grimly on the two men he believed to be the only Immortals he had to contend with. His only experience with the Race had been with Nardo, who he had watched heal from various cuts and injuries almost instantly. The beheading and the Quickening he had witnessed had been the most thrilling and the most frightening thing he had ever seen.

"Are you really Connor MacLeod?" he finally gathered the courage to ask the taller man with the odd, light eyes.

"Aye, lad. I've been called that for over 600 years," the man responded in a soft, resonant voice accompanied by a feral, nasty smile.

Connor watched the man's Adam's apple as it rose and then fell with a nervous swallow. The man actually had a lot of courage, Connor decided.

"And him," he jerked his head toward the back of the van where Sean was curled up, not sleeping exactly, but trying to manage the various internal demons that were vying for his attention. "Is he really Duncan MacLeod's son?"

Connor didn't answer. It was probably a mistake to advertise who Sean was. Duncan had a lot of enemies who would be delighted to have a weapon like Sean to use against him. "We all take many names and identities over the centuries, Carlo," was all he answered.

"Is Duncan MacLeod really as big as they say he is?"

"And how big is that?" Connor asked with amusement.

"Over seven feet tall. They say he carries this ancient Japanese sword with magic powers. That he carries the power of thousands of ancient Immortals. That you can't even touch him without feeling it."

"Duncan MacLeod was my student over five hundred years ago. He was a passable swordsman then and has gotten better since. But he's no super-hero. He's a stubborn, self-righteous fool at times," Connor said harshly, looking back at Sean's strained features. "But he's a good friend, nonetheless," he finished quietly.

They drove north of the city, reaching the outskirts and beyond, they finally pulled into a small suburban strip mall ironically left standing despite the destruction of vast numbers of beautiful, quaint, ancient villages that had been standing intact for hundreds of years. The pulled up to the back entrance of a pawn shop. The two trucks containing the weapons were parked nearby under sheltering trees at the edge of the parking lot.

Their next little adventure was sordid and left a nasty taste in everyone's mouth. The pawn shop owner, Carlo and Marcel were left firmly bound and gagged in the rear of the store as Connor drove off in one truck and Sean and Amanda in the other, heading northwest toward Cherbourg.

Even though they'd hung the "closed" sign on the door, Connor figured they had a maximum of a couple of hours before their captives broke loose. Left alone, he might have just killed them, especially given what was at stake. But then again, maybe not. Certainly with Sean along it was never even seriously considered. The drive to the coast was going to take all day, and the tension would only build as uncertainty waited at the end of the road.

Sean was quiet, staring sightlessly out the van window. He'd hardly said a word since they'd left the pawn shop.

"You okay?" Amanda finally asked.

After a minute, Sean took a deep breath and turned towards her. "I'm still trying to sort it out. Some of the meditations help, but I wish I could go for a long run, or do a kata or something."

"I guess I didn't give you enough exercise," Amanda joked.

Sean flushed slightly. "Well, there's still that, too, but it's more like just have too much energy inside my muscles. And what's in my head - that's even more confusing."

"What's it like for him, Amanda?" he asked quietly. "I can't stop thinking about it. What's it like to take the Quickening of someone powerful? Of taking in so many that it becomes an agony?"

She wasn't sure how to answer, but knew he needed to air his own fears. "He doesn't talk about it much, but I know it started getting bad after the Dark Quickening back before you were born. I've never known anyone who has such a penchant for getting into battles. Before he finally managed to stop the Game, for awhile there it seemed like every Immortal on the planet was after his head. I think its both the sense of loss of self, and the power that becomes too much to control." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. In profile he looked much like Duncan, straight on, he looked more like Methos. Right now, starkly outlined against the window, he looked very much his father's son. "Don't worry, Sean. You have a remarkable strength of will inherited from both sides of the family. You can handle this and a great deal more."

"Can I?" He sounded uncertain. "For a few minutes it was horrible, the sense of a life lost, of having stolen someone else's soul. Then it was like being transported straight to heaven. I felt like I could fly!" His voice was a whisper. "I wanted to do it again," he choked. "I was almost willing to kill to feel that way again."

"But you didn't. And you won't," Amanda said, reaching out to hold the big hand that lay clenched against his thigh. He shifted awkwardly, and she smiled. The remembrance and the residual effect of the Quickening was visibly evident in the strain of his pants. Maybe she could help him with that tonight. That is if they survived. If they made it across the Channel. If Constantine hadn't betrayed them.

The sun was low in the sky as they approached Cherbourg. The tension was growing with every passing minute. As planned, Sean pulled out the tracker when they were about a half-hour away from the docks, following behind Connor's van. After a long look at Amanda, he pressed the activating button, holding it down for a count of ten, waiting another 10 seconds, and holding it down again, waiting another 10 seconds and holding it down again.

"Well, I guess we'll see who gets here first," Amanda grinned at him, a gleam of excitement in her eye.

Sean felt his own heart start to pound with fear and excitement. I've been hanging around Connor too long, he thought, feeling an answering grin tugging at his lips. I'm actually beginning to enjoy this stuff.

Amanda flashed her lights at Connor, and both vans suddenly surged ahead, taking a chance at being caught by local law enforcement, but within ten minutes, the powerful 'thwup, thwup' of a hovercopter could be heard fast approaching. Sean grabbed for one of the laser-guided launchers in the back of the van, hoping he could figure out which end to aim as the fumbled with the complex device. By the time he had figured out how to turn it on and power it up and aim it, the vibrations from the pursuing craft could be felt in the air.

"If you're gonna' do something, Sean, you'd better do it fast," Amanda shouted as gunfire began to erupt around them, one blowing a neat hole through the side of the van, rocking it almost off it's wheels. Sean threw open the back door, propping it open with one foot while he braced himself and took aim. He pulled the trigger and . . . nothing happened.

"Shit!" He fumbled with the controls again, finding a red light near a button whose label he didn't have time to read. He pressed it, aimed and fired again. This time, the recoil of the weapon threw him back against the crates, where he could feel something sharp impale itself in his skin, but that hurt was forgotten as he witnessed his shot take a solid bite out of the side of the big hovercopter that was only a few hundred yards away. It tilted dangerously, wobbling as the pilot fought for control, but in seconds was coming back at them.

Sean tried to position himself for another shot and cried out as he found himself unable to rise. "Amanda!" he shouted. "I'm stuck!"

But she had no time to spare as she tried to keep up with Connor who was weaving wildly across the road and back, dodging shots. Just then a tunnel loomed ahead and both vans stopped weaving and floored the accelerators, making a run for the relative shelter, even though the other side would inevitably have a companion 'copter waiting. Then time seemed to stop as she saw Connor's brake lights go on and she slammed on hers, swerving to avoid hitting the back of his van, spinning sideways, grazing the lane divider posts, careening back and coming to rest almost side by side with Connor's vehicle. Only inches in front of which was an old battered green sedan parked sideways, blocking the tunnel. The cheap eastern European vehicles had been known as Yugos since before  
Sean was born. The ancient brand name had been usurped to apply to any vehicle known for unreliability and lack of comfort. The ugly car was surrounded by men in standard E.D. issue coveralls. They all had guns.

"Uh, Amanda," she heard Sean from the back. "I need a little help here."

"Hold on, Sean," she tossed back quietly. "We've got a little situation."

Even as she spoke the men were moving to the back of the vans, pulling open the doors. She heard Sean yelp with pain as someone evidently pulled him loose from whatever problem he had. Amanda opened the door and stepped out cautiously, watching as a large truck pulled up behind the three vehicles.

"What the hell is going on here?" she addressed Connor, who seemed to be talking comfortably to a short bald man who looked out of place in his coveralls.

"Amanda, I'd like you to meet Karl. Constantine sent him."

Karl took her fingers gently, clicked his heels and bowed over her hand. When he looked up, his face was flushed. "Fraulein Amanda," he breathed excitedly. "It is such a privilege to meet you!" he gushed. For a minute Amanda was afraid his glasses would steam. "I've heard so many exciting stories about you . . ."

"Yeah, yeah," Connor said impatiently, glancing up as Sean staggered over to them, holding onto the side of the van, leaning over, grimacing in pain.

"What happened?" Amanda asked sympathetically.

Sean just shook his head, more interested in Connor's conversation.

" . . . The weapons will get loaded onto the truck," Karl was saying. "Our drivers will take the vans out as a diversion along separate routes where we've got firepower already in place, and you three will head to the docks in the Yugo, where you'll be picked up at midnight."

"In a Yugo?" Amanda asked in an appalled tone.

"Shut up, Amanda," Connor growled, grabbing her elbow and steering her towards the car, with Sean limping awkwardly behind.

The truck was loaded in less than a minute and the two vans and the truck full of weapons pulled away, leaving the three Immortals standing next to the battered old Yugo.

Amanda looked at it in disgust. The things a girl had to do, she thought to herself. She climbed awkwardly in the front seat while Sean crawled on his hands and knees into the back. Connor had to work to fold himself into a small enough ball to get into the driver's seat. His long legs barely fit and his knees were awkwardly jammed against the steering wheel, while he had to scrunch his head down when it banged up against the roof.

The Scotsman could be heard to mutter several colorful Gaelic phrases as he managed to turn the key and maneuver the car back into the lane.

The vans and truck had disappeared in the few minutes they had waited, but the broken asphalt and burn marks on the roads told the story of a firefight that had extended for miles. The three Immortals were quiet as Connor drove carefully towards the dock area. Putting mortal lives in danger to save their own was a sobering thought.

Connor pulled into an alley near the docks and stopped the car.

"We've got about three or four hours to wait," Connor said, checking his watch. He glanced towards the back seat. "You've been awfully quiet back there. You okay?"

"No," came a muffled reply. Sean was folded up on the seat, lying on his stomach insofar as the limited space would allow.

"What the hell are you doing?" Amanda asked.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Sean growled. "I'm trying not to sit on my ass, okay?"

Amanda got out and opened the back door. "Oh, dear," she sighed. "You should have said  
something."

"What was I supposed to say? 'Hey, guys, guess what, I've got a spear up my butt?" came the muffled reply.

"Well," she said resignedly, "I guess it has to come out."

"Wait!" Sean shouted, but she paid no attention, reaching in, grabbing at a metal protrusion sticking out of the younglings' lower left buttock and yanking hard.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Sean howled, his back arching up.

"Oh, don't be such a baby," Amanda replied disdainfully. Then she looked at what she held. It was a long dart-like projectile weapon with a barb on the end. Connor took it from her, examining it curiously.

"Well, laddie," he said. "You're a lucky young fellow."

"Lucky!" Sean groused, gingerly rubbing his already-healing ass.

"Aye. That's an explosive tip ye've got there. If it had gone off, you'd be singing a much higher tune."

True to Constantine's promise to be there when they needed him made when Sean had contacted him from Nardo's communication center, a fishing boat met them at the appointed time and place at midnight, and before dawn, they had been taken across the Channel and overland, arriving at dawn to a large, old manor house in Yorkshire.

The three exhausted Immortals stepped into a large hallway to be met by Marcus Constantine, ex-Roman general, historian, curator, art collector and now guerrilla warfare expert. He wore a wine-colored cashmere jacket, soft flannel pants and an ivory ascot, his gray eyes and close cropped hair perfectly accenting his aristocratic features. He greeted the haggard, dirty trio with a small bow, as though welcoming them to a private dinner party.

"Welcome to my humble home," he murmured, brushing the back of Amanda's hand with his lips.

Two sets of cold gray eyes met and he and Connor faced off.

"We were betrayed," Connor said quietly without preamble or greeting. Constantine's gaze didn't waver.

"I know. And you thought it might be me."

Connor was silent.

"Do you still think so?" Constantine asked the slightly taller man.

"I guess we won't know for sure until its confirmed that those weapons reach the Cherokee Nation and we get Methos home safely," Connor replied.

Constantine nodded, then gestured, welcoming them into his home.

~~~~~~~

The day wore on painfully slowly. There was a tendency for the team to hover around outside the repair shed or near the Trans, but Claire quickly lost her patience with kibitzers and her glares and curses kept everyone but MacLeod at a distance. Even Kir schooled herself to leave the pair alone. Extra hands would only get in the way and extra conversation seemed impossible with the determined pair. But by mid-day word started to spread that another try would be made to install and test the repaired part, so Kir and the others gathered under the trees to watch in silent tension.

For awhile all there was to be seen was Mac's legs sticking out from underneath the vehicle, which  
had been levered up on one side for access. Kir swallowed and pushed back the sudden image in  
her mind of the jacks holding the huge transport up suddenly giving way, severing the torso lying  
underneath it into two parts. After several minutes, Mac finally emerged, pulling tools out with him,  
lowering the jacks with a heave, and stepped away. He had taken off his shirt, and was wearing a  
sweat-soaked sleeveless tee. Dirt and leaves were caught in his long hair, and a smudge of grease trailed across the bridge of his nose and down his cheek, now flushed with effort. For a moment, Kir felt transported back in time. There were moments when the Scotsman looked more like a wild Indian warrior than many of her own relatives.

"Okay, Claire. Give it a try," he shouted.

The engines whined into life, pitch slowly rising as pressure built in the coils. Dust and debris began to fly and everyone stepped back as the skimmer rose in slight increments on its column of air until it was just slightly off the ground. Everyone held their breath as the vehicle rose six inches, then ten inches . . . then sank slowly on one side, tilted, hit the ground, then was earthbound again with a jarring 'thud'.

MacLeod was impassive, moving in again to put the jacks in place as Modo and Eddie stepped in to help. Claire stepped out of the vehicle, coming down the ramp spitting a string of curses that Kir hadn't been aware the woman even knew. She had clearly been hanging around Connor too much. With a jerk of her head, she pulled the two inside the repair shed, where Claire paced, continuing her tirade, but Mac stood quietly, wiping his greasy hands on a rag.

"Okay, guys. What's the status?"

"The status is that the damn repair won't hold!" Claire growled. "If we can't maintain pressure, we can't fly! That's what the status is."

"And what can we do about it?" Kir asked patiently.

"Keep trying," Mac said. "We've been trying to replicate the part as it was, but I think we have to move beyond that. The metal has been weakened. I think I can just cut that section out, foreshorten the whole piece and weld it together at a stronger point. It won't be neat or pretty, but it might work long enough to get us to England, but that's about it," he finished quietly, rubbing his eyes, leaving another dirty streak on his face.

"How long will it take?"

"I don't know. Take me an hour or so to remove the part, then since this time we're not going to try to be delicate about it, maybe a couple or three hours for the refit, then another hour and a half to install. Maybe sometime tonight."

Kir looked at her two mechanics. Claire was loosing it, the stress and tension and exhaustion written in every line of her body. It was less obvious with Mac, but she knew for a fact that he had hardly eaten in two days and hadn't slept in at least that long.

"If this doesn't work, what is there left to try?"

The two looked at her in silence.

"Walking?" Claire offered with a slightly hysterical laugh.

"Okay. You two are going to have a meal and get a few hours sleep before you try anything else. We can't afford to have this botched because of exhaustion. Now, go!" she ordered with a shooing motion of her hands.

Claire closed her eyes, her arms crossed, turning away, then turning back. "Look, Commander, I . . ."

"This isn't up for debate, Claire. That was an order!" The woman glared at her, shook her head in frustration and stomped out.

Mac wordlessly moved to the repair bench, gathering tools.

"That goes for you, too, MacLeod."

He looked at her in surprise. "I'm fine, Kir. I couldn't sleep anyway," he said distractedly, continuing his work.

She crossed to him, her big hand clamping over his wrist. "No, you're not fine, Duncan. Even Immortals have to eat and sleep. You're no good to me, to Sean or to or anyone else if at a critical moment you aren't thinking clearly. This is a order, MacLeod. I'm quite serious."

He took another breath to protest, but stopped at the hard look in his Commander's eye. He could defy her, but it went against his belief that each team needed a leader whose authority was primary, if not absolute. He dropped the tool with a bit more force than necessary and raised his hands in surrender.

"Yes, Commander. I hear and obey."

He moved silently away and out the door, and she followed, determined to hold him to his word.

Despite his words to Kir, the moment Duncan lay down on the hard comfort of the bedding his body gave an overwhelming command to sleep, even while his mind continued to hurl dozens of thoughts at itself. He was barely aware when he felt another body slip into the blankets next to his, subconsciously acknowledging Kir's scent and feel, and quite willingly borrowing himself into the comfort of her arms.

It may have been that unknowing sense of safety that unleashed his dreams and Sean would have been fascinated if not amused, MacLeod thought with the part of his brain that was cognizant of the fact he was dreaming.

It gave him some pause to find himself not in the home he shared with Kir, nor even in the war torn landscape that had become ingrained on his memory's eye over the last fifty years...but in another domicile, a home that had been surrendered long before the war laid claim to the city and state that had once housed DeSalvo's gym and dojo.

Yet the creak and give of the floorboards in the old gym were familiar as his own heartbeat, the equipment familiar, and ghosts whipped by him in a flicker of thought, barely remembered encounters with Joe Dawson and Richie...old faces moving through the space while Mac sat rooted in the none too comfortable chair in his office, watching them and himself pass by through the glass separating him from the gym proper.

Then the ghosts were gone but he could still hear the whoosh and click of metal, the light placement of feet against the floor, the bare hint of deep throated laughter and he rose, no longer glued to his chair.

She spared with no partner and none of his memories could recall her by face, figure or style as she moved through the fluid sword katas MacLeod knew only too well. Sensing his presence she stopped, slowing her movements gracefully to turn and face him an expectant and welcome smile on her face.

He did not know her. He would have remembered the sculptured lines of her face, the full softness of her cheeks as they blended into a slender throat, eyes as bright and wide and fathomless as the ocean, the color shifting from green to brown to gold and back again. She was as tall as he, slender but not thin, small breasted but with a sensuous grace that might have sent his blood burning had he been less confused by her presence.

She said nothing but bowed to him, then stared pointedly at the katana he found resting against his arm. Without thinking he surrendered the weapon to her and she took it reverently, using the sleeve of her loose gray sweater to rub out blemish on the blade, dark hair falling in subtle curls around her cheeks as her head bent forward. The urge to feel that hair was overwhelming and he stepped forward, only to find his own blade suddenly against his throat, the edge of it pressing against the scar there.

But there was no threat in her eyes, only laughter and mischievousness as she backed him against the wall and continued to move in until her face was only inches away, the katana still between them. He anticipated a kiss, from the smile on her lips, then went tense as she did, both of them looking down to find the katana in Duncan's hands, buried to the hilt in her stomach.

Her eyes met his with confusion before she pressed a pair of bloodied fingers to his lips.

Kir swore and winced as Duncan's elbows caught her painfully in the shoulder as he jerked upright, a soft moan escaping him and his hands wiping at his mouth as if something foul had found entry.

He's still asleep, She realized a half second before she shook him and saw consciousness and reality slip back into his face. Once more he wiped at his mouth, staring at his grease-stained hands.

"Mac, it's all right...just a dream," she said and he stared at her for a moment as if she were a stranger.

"Kir," he murmured and touched her face, then grimaced as she worked out the fading ache in her shoulder.

"You are over tired, my love," she said with a smile, slipping her arms around him and grateful that he returned her hug, however briefly. "What was it? Sean?"

"No, I don't...the dojo...where I lived before the war," he said and she nodded as he fought to hang on to the frayed edges of his dream as if they were important. "There was a girl, practicing katas. I don't know who she was but...I think I should have...or wanted to. I killed her..."

Kir frowned, smoothing the damp hair back from his forehead. He was flushed and shaken. "An Immortal?"

"I don't know...she acted like she knew me, trusted me...damn," he swore softly..."It's gone." His brow wrinkled, furrows appearing as he tried to reclaim the dream. "She wasn't angry...only confused..." he murmured as the last of it slipped away.

"Mac, you are exhausted, you are worried and you feel a little...helpless...about Sean, about Methos. It's okay," Kir soothed. "You know what Sean would say," she said and a faint smile touched his lips.

"Dreams are the prophecies of mad men...I know. All that classical education and he can banish the theories of geniuses without a thought."

"He's okay," Kir said, pulling him back down. "You would know if he weren't. We'll find him."

MacLeod nodded but it was more to placate Kir than to agree. He lay back and pulled her into his arms again but the sleep he needed would not come to him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Notes:
> 
> The Immortal Nations universe incorporates concepts of the ancestry of Immortals (with permission) from Eng's Chaos Chronicles in the HLQC, but is not intended as a sequel to that brilliant work. We also borrow (again, with permission) Eng's character of Sean MacLeod. But the interpretation of who he is, his character and experiences, is our own. The story stands on its own, but the premise of Immortal Nations is better understood by reading the stories on which this universe is based: MacGeorge's Endgame. Also written by MacGeorge with this AU in mind are The Cutting Edge and Checkmate.
> 
>  
> 
> "Future Histories may well claim that the Americas fell to an overwhelming military force, and so they did -- in the end. But the first conquest of the New World was made not on the battlefield but in the boardrooms. She had been meant to lead the world, but unlike the Titan, she found the burden of that world too great and so she fell.
> 
> The unsupported debt of nearly three centuries finally broke her proud back and she succumbed. What had once been the barbaric East became the new West and America, for all her freedoms, could not maintain her own. With her fall went others as the East spread its many-fingered influence in all directions. Once the economic subjugation was near complete, then came the military forces to hold what had been bought and sold and so, America as a nation, fell to superior financial planning -- but her people, they fell to the bloodthirsty rage of conquest.
> 
> But out of that conquest rose anew an old nation and with the Dragons at the gates, the gates were pulled closed by a people who had once fallen before another invasion. The geographical line that had once divided a country now defines a Nation; smaller, less generous, but no less noble or brave. They called themselves the Cherokee once and now do so again, raising up forgotten tribes and a near forgotten heritage to form a bulwark against the Eastern Dawn and they hold fast. Those who can, join them, and despite their military prowess, the East, so far, cannot breach the Gates of Holy Ground: for all of the Nation is Sacred, or so the legends and histories say.
> 
> It is a distinction not lost on the conqueror, the leaders of whom are as Immortal as Gods but as fallible as men. They, the legendary Immortals, had voided a Game, called off a Gathering, and that tale is twisted with this one -- but where that ancient Game claimed there could be only One, this newer Game -- the one we are still playing -- claims there can be only one Immortal Nation. And all the powers of good and evil have gathered to see it played out. Those once divided by a community -- one created to lay aside our bloodthirsty war against one another -- that Community is as threatened as the new Cherokee Nation. The goals are the same and Community and Nation have also joined together. Those once defined by other rules have now become a Tribe, a Clan, and we pray, a Hope that mankind may yet survive an Apocalypse of his own making."
> 
> Peter Two-Sons, Chronicler
> 
> Dawson Historical Society,
> 
> 187 A.F.M. (Old Calendar 2187 A.D)


End file.
